Zoe Saldaña has revealed she thinks Star Trek 4 needs to happen now, before everyone ages out of the story.
In an interview with Deadline discussing her film Emilia Pérez, for which she recently received a Golden Globe nomination, Saldaña said of the as-yet untitled sequel to Star Trek Beyond: “I wish we were able to do it sooner rather than later. I feel like a lot of us have a full head of gray hair, so we need to do this quickly, if this is the same cast that’s going to reprise it again.”
Star Trek 4—as it’s currently known—has been a long time coming indeed, with Beyond having been released back in 2016. But Saldaña is hopeful it will happen, and also hopeful that the story will further explore her character Uhura’s relationship with Spock. “It’s been a minute since I reconnected with Star Trek and all the characters’ journeys,” she said, “but Uhura and Spock were always sort of drawn to each other, it just makes sense to see what is the next step in their relationship and their work relationship as well.”
Next up, Saldaña has the new installment of the Avatar franchise, Avatar: Fire and Ash, directed and co-written by james Cameron. Saldaña will reprise her role of Neytiri, opposite Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, a former marine who infiltrated her alien world and chose to remain there when they fell in love.
As to what we can expect from the upcoming film, Saldaña said: “The way that we left the Sully family, they’re mourning heavily the loss of their child. So I do believe that that will carry out a great deal in the third installment of Avatar. Jake and Neytiri are on this journey of acceptance, of accepting who they are and what they must be for each other and how they’re going to push forward to keep their family safe. And I love the fact that in the core of this entire saga is a beautiful love story, and I love that Jim really wrote that for them. But it’s not going to be easy. They’re not always going to meet eye to eye, and I just hope that they keep each other safe. That’s my hope for them.”
In addition, Saldaña has recently appeared in the second season of Paramount+ hit series Special Ops: Lioness from creator Taylor Sheridan, in which she stars as Joe, a CIA operative who recruits women as undercover spies. While a third season has not yet been conformed, Saldaña said she could imagine a move inspired by Sheridan’s other shows, a kind of prequel plot “like a 1923 for Yellowstone—a subplot that can run in parallel with anything else.”
What that subplot could be, hopes Saldaña, is the backstory of how her character Joe met her CIA boss Kaitlyn (Nicole Kidman). “I would’ve loved to see the beginnings of the Kaitlyn Meade and Joe McNamara and how she was recruited, because she’s just so good. And there’s a scene there where Byron Westfield (Michael Kelly) tells her, ‘You can’t be in the field anymore. I can’t replace you.’ And that was a really good scene there. And then it made me wonder how Kaitlyn found Joe and how Kaitlyn recruited Joe. It would be really interesting.”
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