Star Trek dream comes true

For Dawnn Lewis, becoming part of the "Star Trek" legacy wasn't just another job. It was a dream come true. "I have watched every incarnation of Star Trek, the TV series, movies, you name it, even the first animated series back in the day," the 59-year-old Broadway actress told the Daily News. "I am a huge Star Trek fan." Lewis said she routinely stayed up after bedtime in her Brooklyn home with her brothers to watch episodes of the science fiction classic. When her mother took night classes, she was watching Captain Kirk explore strange new worlds. Now, decades later, she's joined the franchise herself as the commander of a starship. Lewis plays Captain Freeman of the U.S.S. Cerritos in CBS All Access's animated comedy, "Star Trek: Lower Decks." Unlike her predecessors, however, her character isn't the central figure of the show. And Freeman's crew is a bit more dysfunctional. Not that any of this bothers Lewis, as she loves just being a part of a science fiction legacy. "To be the captain of this new Starfleet vessel, the Cerritos, is really like a dream come true," she said. "This is awesome." Like the other actors cast in "Lower Decks," Lewis wasn't aware when she first auditioned for the role that it was a "Star Trek" project. "I had no idea what I was auditioning for," she said with a laugh. "The audition sides were just random lines they had given us, and we were random characters ... I think my character was a bird, it was Captain Bird." Lewis, whose career started with he popular sitcom, "A Different World," actually came to appreciate that she didn't know until they actually hired her. "I'm sorta glad I didn't know, because I probably would have been really, really nervous," she noted. Much of her voice work for the series was done before the coronavirus pandemic shut down Hollywood, along with the rest of the country. She was in living in Harlem at the time, and playing Tina Turner's mother in the Broadway musical about the famed singer. After the stage show was shut down, and wasn't expected to resume until the spring, Lewis headed back to Los Angeles. But COVID-19 would hit her in ways she never expected. "It was a trying time, because during one of those months, within four weeks, I had 15 friends pass away," she told the News. "It was emotionally traumatic." Most were victims of coronavirus, but one actually took his own life. "A friend of mine from college ... was feeling so despondent, and hopeless, that he committed suicide," she said. "It was a lot to process, it was a lot to wade through." The months that followed have seen a country in chaos, marred by racial strife, protests and economic difficulties brought on by the virus. Yet, Lewis remains optimistic that the hopeful future depicted in Star Trek is not out of reach. "I honestly believe it's possible, and I honestly believe it is possible in the near future," she said. "We got one Earth, this is it, this is all the Earth we're gonna have," she said. "So we need to stop taking advantage of it, we need to stop destroying it, and destroying each other, and figure it out."