LOS ANGELES (February 5, 2002 4:18 p.m. EST) - Kissing William Shatner on television was no big deal to Nichelle Nichols - even though the year was 1968, the show was "Star Trek," and the kiss was the first between a white character and a black character on TV.
"It seems so silly now, doesn't it? I mean, that that was such a big deal. Not the kiss - I really enjoyed the kiss," Nichols told reporters, bursting into laughter. "But when I saw it, I went, 'Oh, good, a great scene,' you know. I wasn't thinking, 'The first interracial kiss.'"
She said she almost quit "Star Trek," where she played communications officer Lt. Uhura, but the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. talked her out of it.
"He said, 'For the first time, people who don't look like us will see us as we should be seen - not only as beautiful beings but intelligent and qualified,'" Nichols said. "And I went back and told (show creator Gene Roddenberry), I told him what Dr. King said, and he cried. He said, 'God bless him. Somebody knows what I'm trying to achieve'"
Nichols plays Cuba Gooding Jr.'s mother in the sled-dog comedy "Snow Dogs," which was No. 2 at the box office last weekend.
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