‘The Walking Dead’s Sonequa Martin-Green Reflects On Her Time As Sasha

Sonequa Martin-Green, who played Sasha on The Walking Dead for four seasons before joining Star Trek: Discovery, is opening up about her time on the hit zombie drama.

“It was such a gorgeous arc,” Martin-Green tells ESSENCE of Sasha’s journey from loner to sacrificial hero.

“I came onto the show [with] Sasha very closed off, very pragmatic, very rough with this really thick barrier. I wasn’t open for connection. Then I got broken down in the best way by these people in my circle, by love and romance. I made that trek from darkness to light as Sasha,” Martin-Green said.

After finding romance with Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) and then Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), with whom she discussed starting a family with and starting a life, Sasha found herself consumed with vengeance for her lover’s brutal murder before resigning herself to die as a way of saving her friends.

“She got all the way down to wanting to die, to kill herself and then found a way to rise, found a way to live,” Martin-Green added. “That was such a tremendous experience, they gave me nothing short of poetry for those last [episodes].”

The actress made history as the first Black woman to headline a Star Trek series. She stars in Discovery as Starfleet science officer Michael Burnham, a role Martin-Green feared she would be unable to accept due to her Walking Dead commitments.

“It all timed out,” Martin-Green said, “it was all very divine how it timed out.”

She’s since settled into her role as a Star Trek lead, but she admitted “I just did not think that this would be the next step after The Walking Dead.”

“I know [God] has a plan and I’m very on board with his plan because I think it’s divine and much better than anything I could plan, I was very hopeful when The Walking Dead was wrapping up,” she said. “I was excited for the next step.”

Last summer, Martin-Green described her multiple seasons on The Walking Dead as her “postgraduate degree,” because the show taught her “so much about being on a show that has such a massive reach.”

The entire first season of Star Trek: Discovery is available to stream via CBS All Access and Amazon Prime. The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.