'Star Trek: Discovery' Cast Discusses Rebooting the Franchise in 2017

Jason Isaacs, Sonequa Martin-Green and Michelle Yeoh – cast members of the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery series debuting on September 24 – are on the cover of the latest issue of Variety, out on newsstands now.

Here’s what the cast had to say:

Sonequa on being the first African-American Star Trek lead: “If you say you love the legacy of Star Trek but you don’t love that, then you’ve missed it.”

Sonequa on the new iteration of Star Trek: “Anyone doing a new iteration of Star Trek, you have to understand how deep it is, you have to understand how important it is. You have to understand how much of a pillar it is to our culture. I think you need that in order to really give it the weight it deserves, and I think that — I hope that more than anything — people got the sense of how serious we take this. When I first got started, I had my freak-out phase. I had my almost catatonic moment where I thought, ‘What is happening?’ And I knew very quickly that I couldn’t live there and that I couldn’t create there. I owed it to the story and I owed it to the legacy to get it together. And I had to focus myself in gratitude. I had to focus myself on the passion for the vision for the story that we’re doing.”

Jason on the message the show sends in the Trump-Brexit era: “The world is complicated and horrible, and I don’t know how to explain to my children the insanity of the people who are in charge of it at the moment. I thought it was a good story to tell and something I would be happy to watch, about presenting a vision of the world that’s full of drama but also full of resolution and unity.”

For more from the Star Trek: Discovery cast, head to Variety.com.