Chris Pine Thinks ‘It’s About F***ing Time’ Star Trek Included Gay Characters

It’s a big year for Star Trek. It’s celebrating 50 years, a new TV series is in development, there’s been a new film, and that movie included the franchise’s first on-screen gay character, as it showed John Cho’s Sulu is married to a man. On that last point, it seems the latest Kirk feels it’s been a long wait for that gay character.

Speaking to THR to celebrate Trek’s 50 years, he says of including a gay character, “Amen, man. It’s about f***ing time. The fact that there’s still a conversation about it means that there’s still room to go in terms of it being normalized.”

He also spoke about George Takei’s disappointment that it was Sulu that was shown to be gay in Star Trek Beyond, saying, “My only rebuttal to George Takei — no matter what kind of creative differences he had about Sulu being gay, and I can understand his creative differences — is the fact that our job is to make people feel less alone. If there’s one kid in Middle America who feels any amount of self-loathing because he feels different, or is being bullied because he feels different or looks different or sounds different, if our film can give him solace and make him or her feel less alone, then abso-effin-loutely we should do it all the time, every day of the week.”

Cho’s Sulu soon won’t be the only LGBT character in the Star Trek universe, as it’s also been revealed that the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery TV show will feature someone who is openly gay.