Star Trek: Discovery Finds Its Lead With a Current Walking Dead Actress

Star Trek: Discovery finally has its star.

The Walking Dead's Sonequa Martin-Green will headline the first Star Trek series in over a decade for CBS All Access, TVGuide.com has learned. Martin-Green will play First Officer Michael Burnham in the new series hitting CBS' streaming network in May. This is the first time that a Star Trek series won't be anchored by a character playing a captain, but according to Entertainment Weekly, who first reported the news, Martin-Green's character's position as lieutenant commander will have "caveats."

Casting an African-American female to lead the series was a big priority for the show's original showrunner, Bryan Fuller, who left the show earlier this fall due to his other creative commitments. Sonequa Martin-Green's casting follows the announcement that Rent alum Anthony Rapp will also be playing the openly gay Lt. Stamets, an "astromycologist" and Starfleet Science Officer.

Star Trek: Discovery casts three new klingons

Rapp and Martin-Green join Michelle Yeoh as Captain Georgiou, the Starfleet Captain aboard the Starship Shenzhou, and Doug Jones as Lt. Saru, a Starfleet Science Officer and a new alien species in the Star Trek universe.

Martin-Green is best known for playing Sasha on The Walking Dead, where she's been killing zombies since Season 3.

Star Trek: Discovery will initially premiere on CBS in May before moving exclusively to CBS All Access.

What do you think of the casting?