Star Trek: Discovery’s Sonequa Martin-Green wouldn’t mind returning to The Walking Dead franchise

Sonequa Martin-Green as Sasha Williams in The Walking Dead

OCTOBER 19, 2020 - Star Trek: Discovery’s leading lady, Sonequa Martin-Green, wouldn’t mind heading back to the past - her past, that is. Before she was Burnham, she was Sasha, one of the main characters of the Emmy Award-winning drama series The Walking Dead. And in a new piece from Entertainment Weekly, she’s said that she wouldn’t mind returning to the franchise to tell more of Sasha’s backstory.

Martin-Green spoke to EW on their EW Live radio show last week. The discussion was primarily about the launch of Discovery season three, but talk turned to her old role, and what part she might play in the Walking Dead spinoff series Tales of the Walking Dead, which is said to be in future development. That series, said EW, is expected to be an anthology series which will feature the return of some “dearly departed characters to fill in gaps in their backstory.”

What would Martin-Green say about returning to the role of Sasha?

“I’d love it,” she told EW. “I love Sasha. I love The Walking Dead. That was my family before this [Star Trek] family. [...] That would be so much fun.”

Returning to Sasha would also let Martin-Green explore some of the backstory for her character, which she told EW she created much of. “I was always interested in backstory. Of course I am, as an actor, with every character that I play. But as the years went on as Sasha, I was finding so much joy in developing so much backstory that no one would ever know.”

Over time, Martin-Green said, her backstory started to come to the forefront. “I remember when I decided that I was a firefighter and then built all those memories for myself,” she said. “But then that started to become part of the conversation.”

It’s worth noting that Martin-Green returning to The Walking Dead is a far-off pitch, at best. While Walking Dead producers pitched potential ideas for Tales of the Walking Dead in their recent New York Comic Con panel, none of them mentioned Sasha. Which, of course, is also not to say that it hasn’t crossed anyone’s mind.

Past episodes of The Walking Dead are available to stream on amc.com or Netflix. And of course, you can watch Martin-Green in her current role as Michael Burnham, in the new season of Star Trek: Discovery, now streaming on CBS All Access.