TODAY IN STAR TREK HISTORY: France Nuyen Was Born

Images: Paramount / John Mathew Smith.

JULY 31, 2023 – While she is best known to Star Trek fans for her eponymous role in Star Trek: The Original Series’ season three episode, “Elaan of Troyius,” her stage, film, and television career stretches over fifty years and includes appearances in films and television series such as South Pacific, The Joy Luck Club, Gunsmoke, and St. Elsewhere. Born on today’s date in 1939, France Nuyen turns 84 years young.

Nuyen was born in Marseille and grew up in France. She came to the US in 1956 and was living in New York when director Josh Logan, who, she notes in a 2021 interview, spoke French, hired her after one meeting for South Pacific. This was her film debut, in 1958. Following up on that film, she appeared on Broadway in the title role of The World of Suzie Wong (also directed by Logan). Life, which featured Nuyen on its October 6, 1958 cover, said that “a good part of Broadway’s interest stems … from reports that 19-year-old France Nuyen, who … has never acted on stage before, is a knockout as Suzie…. She is touchingly childlike, impish and fatalistic about her profession [as a prostitute].”

Suzie Wong is also where she first worked with another actor familiar to Star Trek fans. The Life article goes on to note that Logan “has found another proficient young actor, William Shatner, to act Suzie’s only serious lover….”

Nuyen would, of course, meet up again with Shatner for “Elaan of Troyius” eight years after her first television credit, an episode of Hong Kong, with Rod Taylor. In an interview for Marc Cushman’s These Are the Voyages: TOS Season Three, she said, “I got the part for Star Trek from a phone call from an agent. I watched very little television. I still had trouble understanding the language because they spoke fast on television and I had to accustom myself to the rhythm of the American language. So I hadn’t seen Star Trek. I don’t recall being interviewed. I spoke to a production manager who gave me the script.” She said that she was very grateful to have done Star Trek, which she called a “timeless concept.”

Nuyen would go on to appear in film and television until at least 2008. But along the way, in 1986, she earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology and began a second career counselling abused women, delinquent youth, substance abusers, prostitutes, and women in prison. While she received a Golden Globe nomination for South Pacific, she also received a “Woman of the Year” commendation for the city of Los Angeles in 1989, resulting from her counselling work. She has received many other related commendations and awards.

Nuyen also teaches and lectures in other areas of interest, such as philosophy, Shamanism, and spiritual healing.

Please join us in wishing France Nuyen the happiest of birthdays!