Michelle Yeoh's 'unpredictable' “Star Trek” role inspired every facet of “Section 31”: 'You have a woman on fire' (exclusive)

At the center of Star Trek: Section 31 is Michelle Yeoh. Everything else within the first Trek film of the Paramount+ era orbits around her. The visuals, the camera work, the colors of the costumes, the inclusion of certain spaceships are all inspired by Emperor Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius (or just Philippa for short), first introduced in Star Trek: Discovery.

“At the end of the day, each scene usually belongs to one particular character. In Section 31, 99 percent of those scenes belong to Michelle Yeoh’s character, Philippa Georgiou,” director Olatunde Osunsanmi, who also serves as writer and executive producer on the movie, tells Entertainment Weekly. “So then what you have is a movie that is visually inspired by who she is. She is unpredictable, she is dangerous, she is relentless, she also has discovered that she's kind and has the opportunity for redemption. Instead of a man on fire, you have a woman on fire and a visual design that is unpredictable for the first time in this modern era."

Osunsanmi has been involved with the project for years. He remembers working on Star Trek: Discovery ("Disco," for short) when Yeoh took a meeting with Alex Kurtzman, the producer/overlord of the Hollywood Trek empire. Their goal was to create a spinoff series, first announced in 2019, that centered around Philippa — not Captain Philippa Georgiou of the USS Shenzhou introduced in the Disco season 1 premiere, but Emperor Philippa Georgiou, an alternate version of the character from the Mirror Universe that rules the Terran Empire.

Osunsanmi planned to direct the pilot for this new series, penned by Craig Sweeny. "We actually prepped and had a concept meeting on the pilot of Section 31 while we were finishing and shooting the finale of Disco season 2," he mentions. "So we essentially had two parallel shows happening at the same time."

A few starts and stops, another alternate pilot script treatment from Sweeny, a COVID-19 pandemic, and two Hollywood strikes later, Star Trek: Section 31 now stands as a movie, to be released on Paramount+ next week. Osunsanmi credits the "relentlessness" of Kurtzman, Aaron Baiers (president of TV for Kurtzman's production company, Secret Hideout), and Yeoh herself for keeping it alive. "I can't believe that we actually are on the verge of releasing it to the world after all of that," he says.

Section 31 sees Philippa running a nightclub called the Baraam when she's recruited to join the film's titular squadron, a black-ops division of Starfleet. The other operatives feel representative of classic archetypes of spy and heist movies, but with a Star Trek twist.

There's Alok (Omari Hardwick), the suave team leader; Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), the by-the-books Starfleet representative; Quasi (Sam Richardson), the "master of disguise" shape-shifting Chameloid; Zeph (Rob Kazinsky), the "muscle" of the group who's fused with a mechanical exoskeleton; Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok), the hacker type who's not quite the Vulcan he appears to be; and Melle (Humberly González), the "femme fatale" Deltan, an alien species known for their strong sexual attraction. The mission, specifics for which will remain under wraps until the film premieres, involves Philippa grappling with her past. (Actress Miku Martineau plays a younger Philippa in flashbacks.)

"It is certainly different to have this type of team in the Star Trek universe," Osunsanmi says. "That was what was exciting about it, seeing what happens in the dark and what happens way outside of Federation space."

Osunsanmi considers himself the kind of director who lets character and emotion guide how he visualizes the story for an audience. Similar to how past Star Trek shows like Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and Picard came with their own aesthetic, he found himself latching on to the unpredictability of Philippa and using that to inform everything else. "That's why we get the unpredictable lenses. We could be in this lens," he says, referring to the horizontal Zoom screen through which he appears for the interview, "but then it could zoom in, it could zoom back out, it could do both within it. You don't know what it's going to do."

He also notes how he went to Panavision and asked them to reconstruct some of their equipment to give them different bokeh camera lenses, which create artfully blurred backgrounds. "Some of the bokeh you'll see are very digital when [the story is] very mission-oriented," Osunsanmi explains. "Sometimes when we were in the Baraam, we had horizontal ovals for the bokeh in the background that gave it its own special thing that's not been in any other Star Trek."

Even Team Section 31's mission ship is closer to a typical starship, yet it's catered (by production designer Paul Kirby) to Philippa and the specific personnel around her. The costumes, Osunsanmi points out, feature pinks and purples fans didn't often see in Disco, as well as distinct blues they haven't seen since Disco season 1. "In this current version of Trek," he says, "everything is just a bit more on edge and unpredictable, which mirrors Philippa Georgiou's personality."

You'll see what he means when Star Trek: Section 31 premieres on Paramount+ Jan. 24.

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