There's always a bit of nervousness before I interview someone. I worry that my questions won't be interesting enough to warrant an intriguing response. Sometimes I get lucky, and the performer or creator will mask the possible blandness with brilliant responses. That’s what happened here with Babs Olusanmokun, Joseph M’Benga of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Babs Olusanmokun's career has spanned over two decades and doesn’t seem to have an end in sight. And despite being someone with a long IMDb page, Babs Olusanmokun came into this interview with a smile and laugh that immediately let me know that he understands how lucky he is to be in his position and be a crucial part of the Star Trek franchise.
“It’s a gift to play M’Benga. It’s been a gift to bring him to life," he notes.
Babs then gets into the complexity of playing Dr. M’Benga, saying, “It’s been a gift to explore him, to struggle with that duality of a healer and a killer and arriving at those places, the duality of that. The struggle of that. The obstacles of the way before he decides that, ‘Okay. Now I do have to get on this field of combat and bring this side out.’ This side that I’m not excited about, but unfortunately needs to come out.”
"It’s been a privilege to play Doctor M’Benga and bring him to life.Babs Olusanmokun
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He continues by talking about the depth of Dr. M'Benga by asking important questions. "How did he grow up? What leads him to be able to make the choices he’s made? Why does he not walk away from the field of combat and say, ‘I’m only a doctor'? It shows the struggle of any decent human being with those kinds of choices."
After hearing the passion in his voice, I had a simple question: What does Star Trek mean to you? As expected, his response was heartfelt, and it sounded like he still couldn’t believe he’s part of the franchise as he goes down a road of nostalgia.
“It’s incredible, right? Because you say Star Trek, and those childhood memories from whatever iteration of Star Trek one is familiar with. Whether we saw the first T.O.S. (The Original Series) on syndication, or it’s T.N.G. (The Next Generation), or it’s Deep Space Nine, there is such a history with it.”
“And the original, how it started out. Gene Roddenberry’s genius in saying, ‘I want to write this story. You pushing me back because you don’t want to see the reality of life in front of you, and so I can’t make this modern detective story, or modern world story, so let’s go into space to the future. And in the future, we do have these people. We do have this beautiful Black woman. We do have this Asian man. We have the people who are here on Earth. We have the representation of life as it should be.”
Before he left, I asked Babs Olusanmokun what his crowning moment of being on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and playing Dr. M’Benga is.
“All of it. Being part of it is a crowning moment. Being part of it and being able to tell stories with him. We’ve explored quite a bit of the character, and he hasn’t been done a disservice. The Dak stuff. The killer, unfortunately. But the magical stuff, like playing with his daughter. I can really say, The Elysian Kingdom (season 1, episode 8), the love of his child was a beautiful moment, you know?”
Lastly, as a Black man, Babs Olusanmokun ends with something that hit me right in the heart. “To see a Black man and his child together and the love of that in this world, I thought it was a beautiful thing because we know that exists all over the place, but we’re not necessarily shown it enough.”
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are released at 3:00 a.m. ET on Thursday. Stay tuned to Bam Smack Pow and their social media pages on Bluesky, Instagram, and Twitter for more on this show, Star Trek's 60th anniversary, and more.
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