Martin-Green’s Thoughts On 2020
2 min read
2020 has been a busy year for Sonequa-Martin Green, with wrapping filming of Season Three of Star Trek: Discovery just before the COVID-19 lockdown, and having her second child.
Martin-Green said that the second pregnancy was more complicated than the first and she was under doctor’s orders to rest once filming ended. “[Lockdown] was the silver lining for me,” she said. “I was able to stay at home and get off my tail and rest. And another prayer of mine had been to spend as much time with my family as humanly possible. I was able to just squeeze all the family time out of those months that I could.”
Her daughter Saraiyah Chaunté Green was born mid-July during a planned home birth.
Martin-Green has also been affected by the Black Lives Matter movement. Born in Alabama, she was definitely aware of racism. “Being Black in America, but also being raised in the South — where racism is quite in your face, it’s not so subtle down there — I feel like this is a time of exposure and a time of enlightenment,” she said. “It’s almost as if the walls of the country are being broken into, and you can see mold in the foundation of the home. I think about raising my children in this (country)…where the system wasn’t designed for them to succeed. My husband and I have thought a lot about how we instill in them a sense of worth and a sense of value that goes beyond this physical realm. They need to know something is much bigger than them, and that bigger something, which of course we believe is God, is within them.
“There’s always risk in speaking the truth. I have certainly been emboldened by all the voices that have risen in recent years. There has certainly been improvement. As someone who has deep faith, I have to maintain a balance where I celebrate what has come but have a healthy dissatisfaction for what hasn’t come yet. I ultimately believe that God is in control. So I have to look at what’s going on around me and believe that it’s happening for a reason. And I have to hope for a better future.”
Her world of Star Trek: Discovery is a positive one for Martin-Green, who sees in it what is not quite here in the real world today. “I actually do believe that the story of Star Trek is in a post-racial world,” she said. “I’m so grateful to be a part of something that shows you the solution because everywhere you look, you see the problem,” she said. “It’s so important for people to see a world like this. A lot of people need to see to believe. A lot of people need to see an example before they can wrap their minds around bringing it forth in their own lives.”
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