John Cho: gay kiss was cut from Star Trek Beyond

For one, there is presumably a lot of action to cover during Star Trek Beyond‘s runtime.

Zachary has been dating model Miles for around two years – with the pair confirming their relationship on social media in August 2014 – so fans were only too eager to know if they’d made their commitment official. I love him. That’s not going to change.

John Cho hasn’t yet had the chance to speak with George Takei following the announcement that Hikaru Sulu is revealed as gay in Star Trek Beyond.

John Cho’s kissing scene with his onscreen husband was cut from Star Trek Beyond.

Now his long-time character Sulu, the helmsman of the starship USS Enterprise, has become the franchise’ first openly gay character.

“While I understand that we are in an alternate timeline with the new Trek movies, for me it seemed less than necessary to tinker with an existing character in order to fulfill Gene’s hope of a truly diverse Trek universe”, he said in a Facebook post. In this excerpt, Cho discusses how he overcame his initial reluctance about revealing Sulu’s sexual orientation and Lin talks about what happened when Takei first brought up the idea to Roddenberry years ago.

The decision to make a long-time franchise staple character gay comes as Hollywood faces growing pressure to include more diversity in its blockbuster films.

So the Sulu in this film is no longer Takei’s Sulu, he explains.

Cho said he was anxious that Takei, who originated the role of Sulu 50 years ago, would object to the character being in a same-sex relationship in the new film because “he couldn’t come out [earlier] and that he had crafted a straight character”. “He is a different Sulu”.

“If it had just been a faceless mass, it still wouldn’t have quite resonated as well as it did with those two people who we know are Sulu’s beloved family”, Pegg said. In a press release, IDW’s Star Trek editor Sarah Gaydos stated, “Mike and Tony are poised to take the series in such an exciting direction”. Star Trek has struggled with romance, period, which is why Chakotay and Janeway spent seven years building tubs and Picard and Crush spent all that time giving each other moony eyes instead of just kissing already. It was still looking towards appealing on a broad level – it was a brightly coloured weekly TV show.

“How do we make this relevant to the 50th anniversary?”

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“But the thrust of Star Trek is about inclusivity”. And while I am flattered that the character of Sulu apparently was selected as an homage to me, this was never about me or what I wanted.