DECEMBER 14, 2021 - Star Trek, when at its best, is about representation and a future of equality for all. In the meantime, there is progress to be made. One of those who is busy, on and off screen, working toward that future is Star Trek: Picard’s Raffi Musiker, Michelle Hurd. 

Hurd spoke recently with Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, from which she graduated in 1988. She revealed that she has a family history in acting and activism. Her mother, Merlyn, is white, was an actor and is a psychologist, and her father, Hugh, was Black and an actor and activist. 

Remembering her father’s work, Hurd said, making the connection to her SAG-AFTRA and other efforts off screen, “My godfather, Godfrey Cambridge, was also an actor, and Maya Angelou was a friend—they all worked together in an acting company. It was a normal thing to see them in our living room, talking about civil rights issues and injustices. I grew up knowing that there was inequity and knowing that to be an artist, as a person of color, was going to be challenging.”

Hurd also grew up with Star Trek, which appealed to her activist parents. She said, “When we would watch television, it was really important to my father that his children see themselves represented. Star Trek was the one show that we would all sit down and watch. Every episode was about inclusion and diversity and the world trying to deal with people who are blue. How do we interact and how do we make a cohesive world?”

Michelle Hurd is “really interested in telling true, flawed individuals’ stories, and in making people who don’t often see themselves represented be seen.” For more on her background and her work in and out of Star Trek and on and off screen, head over to BU.edu.