Best known for playing Lieutenant Uhura, the communications officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise on the original 60’s television series, Star Trek, former dancer, and bodacious model Nichelle Nichols is one of the first African-American women to be cast in a role other than stereotyped black maid or nanny.
Just two weeks in recovery after suffering a stroke in the late summer of 2015, Nichelle says, “I am feeling the best that I felt in a very long time,” Nichols said, smiling.
Nichols added that there’s been no loss of mobility in the wake of her stroke, telling Entertainment Tonight, “I am as wild and woolly as I have ever been.”
The acclaimed actress says that she was able to get past her illness using a coping technique she learned from her parents.
“Things I can’t deal with and have no say over, I deny them,” Nichols explained. “And strangely enough most times they go away. So this was one of those times.”
But she recognizes that simply denying something won’t always work, and sometimes you have to fight hard to get past obstacles.
“Yeah, I am a fighter,” Nichols said. “Don’t be messing with my game. My game is my career.”
And what a great, long career Nichols continues to have.
In a moving moment during Nichols’ farewell Comic-Con panel in December 2021, NASA Astronaut Appearance Specialist Denise Young – who said she was inspired to pursue a career at…