Previously it’s been announced that the cast of the new Star Trek TV series, Star Trek: Discovery, will include Michelle Yeoh as a Starfleet captain and Anthony Rapp and Doug Jones as Starfleet science officers.

The casting we hadn’t heard about yet, however, is for who will be playing the latest Trek series main character. Now it’s being reported that the show has finally found its lead in The Walking Dead star Sonequa Martin-Green.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Martin-Green is set to take on the role of a lieutenant commander on the starship Discovery. This is the first time that the primary character of a Star Trek series is not a captain.

Producer Bryan Fuller, who was also once attached as showrunner but had to vacate that position (with Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts taking over the job), has described the main character as a “lieutenant commander with caveats,” and explained the decision to change things up for the new series:

Three more actors were also recently joined the cast of Star Trek: Discovery, all three set to play Klingons. The first is Chris Obi (Ghost in the Shell, Snow White and the Huntsman), who will play a leader seeking to unite the Klingon houses named T’Kuvma. Obi is also part of the cast of the show Fuller is still a showrunner on, Starz’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, playing the character Mr. Jacquel. Next is Shazad Latif (Penny Dreadful, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), set to play a Klingon commanding officer named Kol who’s a protegé of T’Kuvma. And finally there’s Mary Chieffo (Miss Dial, Herpes Boy), who will play a battle deck commander on a Klingon ship named L’Rell.

Star Trek: Discovery will make its debut in May of 2017.

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[Source: EW]