Actress Michelle Yeoh takes centre stage after lobbying for Star Trek: Discovery spin-off

NEW YORK – Michelle Yeoh personally lobbied the creator of the Star Trek: Discovery television series (2017 to 2024) – in which she played starship captain Philippa Georgiou – to develop a spinoff for her character.

And eight years later, it has finally paid off, with the Malaysian actress taking centre stage in Star Trek: Section 31, a television film now streaming on HBO Max and continuing her arc from the science-fiction show.

Captain Georgiou died in an early episode of Star Trek: Discovery, but a parallel-universe version of the character – the cunning and despotic Emperor Georgiou – was then brought to the main universe and took on her identity.

After reluctantly helping Starfleet fight the Klingons, she was recruited by its covert intelligence division, the morally murky Section 31 – and the film sees her working with them yet again, this time to intercept a deadly bioweapon.

At the film’s New York premiere in early 2025, the 63-year-old says she began thinking about doing a project like this when she and American executive producer Alex Kurtzman, 51, first worked together on Star Trek: Discovery, which he co-created.

“This is like a dream come true – I’ve been wanting to do this for so long.

“Even before Star Trek: Discovery was launched, I went to Alex Kurtzman and said, ‘Got to do the spin-off. Got to do Philippa Georgiou.’

“This is one of the most intriguing and sophisticated characters who is in the dark and in the light,” says Yeoh, who also played alternate versions of the same character in Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), the science-fiction epic that won her a Best Actress Oscar.

“You never know whether she’s coming or going – or whether she’s going to cut your legs off,” explains the star, who began her career acting in Hong Kong action films and appeared in the acclaimed Chinese martial arts drama Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

Apart from Yeoh, Star Trek: Section 31 has an entirely different cast from Star Trek: Discovery.

American actors Omari Hardwick and Sam Richardson play two of the Section 31 agents, while Yeoh’s Everything Everywhere All At Once co-star Jamie Lee Curtis, 66, makes a brief cameo as the division’s director.

Asked if she had anything to do with Curtis coming on board, Yeoh says: “Come on – she’s my bae.

“We knew that we needed someone who, when anyone saw who it was, they’d go, ‘Of course.’ And everyone went: ‘Jamie Lee Curtis.’ Then they said (to me), ‘Can you call her?’

“And Jamie made time for us.”

For the rest of the shoot, Yeoh says it was “really fun to come together with a completely new cast – a new lot of misfits – and see if we all can bond or if we end up killing each other instead of other people”.

With English actor Robert Kazinsky and South African performer Sven Ruygrok rounding out the cast, the ensemble was also “like a little United Nations because they came from all around the world”.

Star Trek: Section 31’s American director, Olatunde Osunsanmi – who also worked on Star Trek: Discovery – encouraged the actors to improvise some of their scenes and lines.

But while Yeoh was impressed with her co-stars’ ability to do so, the actress – who is married to French motor-racing executive and former rally driver Jean Todt, 79 – admits she does not like going off script.

“They’re very good at improvisation, but I’m old school. Like, ‘Hang on, guys, I do it by the book – whatever my writers tell me, that’s what I’m doing.’

“So, I stand there in awe and give them dirty looks,” says Yeoh, laughing.

The movie will add more layers of complexity to Georgiou, who, even in Star Trek: Discovery, showed glimmers of loyalty, vulnerability and growth.

And towards the end of the series, she walks through a portal and is offered a chance to right some past wrongs.

Yeoh says: “She was told, ‘You’re actually not a bad person. There is something good in you and, because of that, we’re going to give you a second chance.’ And this is her second chance.”

The film, however, was poorly received when it debuted in the United States and other countries in January.

Its 22 per cent critics’ rating and 16 per cent audience rating on the review-aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes make it one of the most panned films in the history of the Star Trek franchise, which began with the 1966 Star Trek TV show.

In a recent interview with entertainment website Collider, Yeoh acknowledges that there were “some things that we could have done better”, although she also believes “the characters that we built and the rapport that we had with each other was amazing”.

“But it’s very hard to please all of your audience all of the time.”