(Now, Saldana is waaay too skinny for my tastes BUT there IS a picture of her wearing a mini-skirt at the movie premiere if you follow the link)
~rave! http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/movies/articles/2009/05/07/20090507saldana0507.html Saldana's Uhura makes history again by Rick Bentley - May. 7, 2009 12:00 AM McClatchy Newspapers LOS ANGELES - The "Star Trek" character of Nyota Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols in the original series, holds an important place in history: Her onscreen kiss with Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) was the first interracial smooch on television. Series creator Gene Roddenberry imagined a future where everyone would work together no matter their race, creed or planet of origin. Casting Nichols as the ship's communications officer was a big move - she became one of only a handful of black actors on television in the mid 1960s. Zoe Saldana, who plays Uhura in the new "Star Trek" feature film, was well aware of all that history when she signed on to the project. But speaking with Nichols helped calm her concerns. "There was this overall happiness and excitement that Star Trek' was coming back and that we were stepping into the family. It made it much easier for us to approach this character, not only remembering the fundamental essences of all of them, but also not to be afraid to add any innovation," Saldana says during an interview at the Four Seasons Hotel. There is no character in the new film that gets more innovation than Uhura. She's involved in a storyline that goes into a completely different galaxy (which we won't give away here) as far as the character is concerned. Saldana thought director J.J. Abrams had lost his mind when she first read the script. "I dropped it and I grabbed my Blackberry and I kept saying, This man's crazy! J.J.'s out of his mind. I'm not that aware about Star Trek,' but I do know that they never mingled. It's crazy!' And then, once I finished the script, it made so much sense," Saldana says. The 30-year-old Saldana has been a professional actor for a decade. Most of her work has been less special-effects driven, such as 'Drumline," "Guess Who" and "Vantage Point." It took her a little while to adapt to "Star Trek's" green screen work, the technique used to put everything from spaceships to creatures in a scene after the actors perform. "There are perks in things that are technical and kind of a drag sometimes. The perks about green screen is that you get back to remembering what it was like to play with your dolls when you were 5 years old, when your imagination was completely and utterly infinite," Saldana says. Just for the record, the original "Star Trek" had ended its first run 14 years before Saldana was 5.
