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Read the full article about Nichelle Nichols’s death, net worth, age, husband, children, height, family, parents, salary, movies, TV shows, cause of death, and other important facts.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Nichelle Nichols was an actress, singer, and dancer from the United States. She is best known for playing Nyota Uhura on Star Trek: The Original Series and in the movies that came after it. When Nichols played Uhura on American TV, she broke new ground for African American actresses. Nichols worked for free to promote NASA’s programmes and find a wide range of astronauts, including women and people of colour, from 1977 to 2015.
Early life
| Name | Nichelle Nichols |
| Net Worth | $10 million |
| Occupation | Actress, Singer, Dancer |
| Age | 89 years |
| Height | 1.68m |
Grace Dell Nichols, whose real name is Nichelle Nichols, was born on December 28, 1932, and she will die on July 30, 2022, at the age of 89. She was born and raised in Robbins, which is a suburb of Chicago in the U.S. Nichelle is the third of six children born to Samuel Earl Nichols, who worked in a factory and was elected both the mayor and chief magistrate of Robbins in 1929, and Lishia (Parks) Nichols, who worked at home. After that, the family moved into an apartment in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighbourhood. She went to Englewood High School for high school and graduated in 1951. Nichols also went to school in Los Angeles and New York. Thomas, Nichols’ younger brother, joined the Heaven’s Gate cult. He died on March 26, 1997, in a mass suicide by the cult that was planned to happen at the same time as Comet Hale–Bopp. He was a member for 20 years, and in the cult’s promotional materials, he often said that he was Nichelle’s brother.
Nichelle Nichols net worth
How much money does Nichelle Nichols have in her bank account? Around $10 million was estimated to be the net worth of Nichelle Nichols Her primary source of income was her work as an actress, singer, and dancer, which earned her a substantial salary. More than $1.2 million a year is Nichelle Nichols’s salary for each film and other earnings. Her successful career allowed her to enjoy opulent lifestyles and opulent automobiles. She was a well-to-do actress in the United States, with a slew of lucrative acting roles under her belt. Nichelle Nichols is a striking figure at 1.68m with a healthy weight that goes well with her outgoing demeanour.
Career
Nichelle Nichols got her big break when she was in Oscar Brown’s much-hyped but ill-fated 1961 musical Kicks and Co. She played Hazel Sharpe, a curvy campus queen who was being tempted by the devil and Orgy Magazine to become “Orgy Maiden of the Month.” This was a thinly veiled satire of Playboy magazine. Even though the play only ran for a short time in Chicago, Hugh Hefner, the publisher of Playboy, noticed Nichols and booked her for his Chicago Playboy Club.
Nichols also played Carmen in a stock company production of Carmen Jones in Chicago, and he was in a production of Porgy and Bess in New York. Nichols did modelling work sometimes when he wasn’t acting or singing. Nichols was also on the cover of Ebony magazine in January 1967. Over the next five years, the magazine ran two feature stories about him. Nichols was a singer who went on tour with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton bands in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
We celebrate the life of Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek actor, trailblazer, and role model, who symbolized to so many what was possible. She partnered with us to recruit some of the first women and minority astronauts, and inspired generations to reach for the stars. pic.twitter.com/pmQaKDb5zw
— NASA (@NASA) July 31, 2022
On the West Coast, she was in The Roar of the Greasepaint and For My People, and her performance in Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin won her a lot of praise. Before she was cast as Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, Nichelle Nichols appeared in an episode of Gene Roddenberry’s first show, The Lieutenant, in 1964 called “To Set It Right,” which was about racism.
Star Trek
Nichelle Nichols was one of the first Black women to be on the popular TV show Star Trek. As a bridge officer, she played a major supporting role that had never been done before. Nichols once thought about leaving the show, but a conversation with Martin Luther King Jr. made her change her mind. At the end of the first season, Nichols got a chance to play a part on Broadway.
Nichols liked being on stage more than in a TV studio, so she agreed to play the part. Nichols went to Roddenberry’s office, told him she was leaving and gave him her letter of resignation. Roddenberry tried to persuade Nichols to stay, but he was unsuccessful. So, he told her to take the weekend off, and if she still wanted to leave, he would let her. That weekend, Nichols went to a banquet put on by the NAACP. There, she heard from a fan who wanted to meet her.
Since I thought it was a Trekkie, I said, “Sure.” I looked across the room and saw Dr Martin Luther King walking toward me with a big smile on his face. Whoever the fan was had to wait. He put his hand on my shoulder and told me, “Yes, Ms Nichols, I am your biggest fan.” He said that his wife Coretta and he would only let their three young children stay up and watch Star Trek. [She told King that she was leaving the show because she wanted to play a role on Broadway.] I never told him why because he kept saying, “You can’t, you can’t…” For the first time on TV, we will be seen the way we should be seen every day: as smart, good-looking, talented people who can sing, dance, go to space, professors, and lawyers. Dr King Jr. said, “If you leave, that door can be shut because your role is neither black nor female; he can cast anyone, even an alien, in it.”
Her work on the show was likened favourably by King to the marches of the ongoing civil rights movement, and he told her that she “could not give up” because she was playing a vital role model for Black children and young women across the country and for other children who would see Black people appearing as equals. Her reaction to King’s statement was so powerful it left Nichols dumbfounded, and the next day she returned to Roddenberry’s office to tell him she would be staying on as a civil rights activist.
Roddenberry’s eyes welled up with tears when she told him what King had said. Upon learning that Nichelle Nichols wanted her job back, Roddenberry dug up her torn-up resignation letter and handed it to her. Nichols’ depiction as Lieutenant Uhura inspired former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison, and Whoopi Goldberg has also mentioned Nichols’ impact. As a result of Goldberg’s request, Guinan was developed and Jemison appeared in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura in the Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” kissed white actor William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk. There are other examples of interracial kissing on scripted US television before this episode was claimed as the first. Even though the kiss between Shatner and Nichols was portrayed as a result of alien telekinesis, it was regarded as innovative. There was some applause, but also some disapproval of the new policy.
“I am utterly opposed to the mingling of the races,” wrote a white Southerner on page 197 of her 1994 book, Beyond Uhura, Star Trek, and Other Memories. As long as Captain Kirk has a red-blooded American girl like Uhura in his arms, there’s no way he’s going to fight it. Nichols sarcastically referred to the kiss and stated, “What do you say, let’s make a little more TV history… and kiss my black ass!” during the Comedy Central Roast of Shatner in 2006.
Despite the series’ discontinuation in 1969, Star Trek continued to influence Nichols’ life in other ways. In Star Trek: The Animated Series, she reprised her role as Uhura and took over command of the Enterprise in the episode “The Lorelei Signal”. She expressed her disappointment that this never happened in the original series in her autobiography. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was Nichols’ final outing as a Star Trek co-star. William Shatner, George Takei, and Walter Koenig were the other three cast members that remained after Leonard Nimoy’s death in 2015.
‘Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories,’ a memoir by Nichelle Nichols, appeared in 1994. While filming Star Trek: The Next Generation, she was approached about playing Peggy Fair on the television show Mannix, but Gene Roddenberry refused to let her leave her contract. Small roles were played by Nichols between the end of the original Star Trek series and the animated series and feature films. She played Dorinda, a foul-mouthed madam in Truck Turner (1974), starring Isaac Hayes, in her only performance in a blaxploitation picture, Doctor, You’ve Got to Be Kidding!
When she voiced her head in a glass jar in the Futurama episode “Where No Fan Has Gone Before,” Nichols featured as one of the Vice Presidential Action Rangers backing Al Gore. Gargoyles’ Diane Maza and Batman: The Animated Series’ Thoth-Kopeira were two of the roles she voiced regularly. The Simpsons episode “Simple Simpson” featured her as the voice of herself in 2004.
She played the mother of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character in the comedy Snow Dogs (2002). In 2006, she starred in the film Lady Magdalene as the mistress of a legal Nevada brothel that was behind on its tax obligations. As well as being an executive producer and choreographer, she also contributed three original songs to the film’s soundtrack, two of which she also wrote. She has twice been nominated for the Sarah Siddons Award for Best Actress in a Chicago Theatre production. In Kicks and Co., she was nominated for her role as Hazel Sharpe, and in The Blacks, she was nominated for both of her roles.
The second season of Heroes featured recurrent roles for Nichelle Nichols. On October 8, 2007, she made her debut in the episode “Kindred.” When Hurricane Katrina wrecked her family’s finances and the lives of her grandkids, she took care of them and her great-nephew, series regular Micah Sanders, as Nana Dawson. In 2008, Nichols played a psychiatrist in the film The Torturer.
She first appeared on screen in The Cabonauts, a web series about a group of science fiction adventurers, as a member of the ensemble in 2009. Cabonauts Inc.’s CEO CJ, Nichols is also a singer and a dancer. He appeared on The Young and the Restless (Y&R) as Neil Winters’ aged mother on August 30, 2016. March 22, 2017, was her first Daytime Emmy nomination in the “Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series” category for her performance in this role.
Music
Nichelle Nichols is a singer-songwriter who has released two albums of original songs. In 1967, during the initial run of Star Trek, Down to Earth was released as a collection of standards. For the Star Trek and space exploration-themed Out of This World, which was published in 1991, there is more of a focus on rock. Nichols performed as Uhura in the Star Trek episodes “Charlie X” and “The Conscience of the King” while singing.
Work with NASA
To help NASA recruit minority and female employees after the discontinuation of Star Trek, Nichelle Nichols offered her services. Women in Motion, a firm she co-founded, formed a partnership with NASA to begin this effort. As a whole, the initiative was a rousing success. Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, and the first African-American astronaut, Guion Bluford, were among those who were recruited. Dr Judith Resnik and Dr Ronald McNair both flew successful missions in the Space Shuttle programme before their deaths on January 28, 1986, in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
Former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, former Deputy Administrator Frederick D. Gregory and former Deputy Administrator Lori Garver were among those who joined the team. The National Space Institute (today’s National Space Society) was a nonprofit, educational space advocacy organisation on whose board of governors Nichols served from the mid-1980s on.
For an eight-hour-long flight in late 2015, Nichols flew on NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) Boeing 747SP, which studied the atmospheres of Mars and Saturn. When the Viking 1 lander touched down gently on Mars on July 17th, 1976, she was invited to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the event. She attended the christening of the first space shuttle, Enterprise, at the North American Rockwell assembly site in Palmdale, California, along with the other cast members from the original Star Trek series. Her visit to the Johnson Space Center on July 14, 2010, included a tour of the space shuttle simulator and Mission Control. In the documentary Woman in Motion about Nichols’ life, her involvement with NASA is given substantial attention.
Politics
Nichols met Obama in the Oval Office on February 29, 2012. President Obama was once quoted as saying that he had a crush on Nichols when he was younger, which Nichols confirmed in a subsequent tweet. What he said was exactly what I was looking for when I asked about it! For the record, I have President Obama on good authority as an outright Trekker. “Wow! That’s amazing!” Democrat his entire life, Nichols also happened to be a devout Presbyterian.
Recognition
Robert A. Heinlein honoured her in 1982 with a dedication in his novel Friday. 68410 Nichols is a celestial body that bears her name. In recognition of her work in television, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1992. He received a Goldene Kamera in 1999 for his role as Kultstar des Jahrhunderts (English: Cult Star of the Century). Los Angeles Mission College awarded Nichols an honorary degree in 2010. The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films gave Nichols the Life Career Award in 2016, making her the first woman to receive it. At the 42nd Saturn Awards ceremony, the award was given. In 2018, Nichols received the Inkpot Award. An honorary Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority member was Nichols.
Relationship with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry
Nichols wrote in her autobiography that she had a brief romantic relationship with Gene Roddenberry, the man behind the Star Trek franchise, in the 1960s. When she discovered that Roddenberry was having an affair with her friend Majel Hudec, she ended the relationship, she said (known as Majel Barrett). In addition to her role as nurse Christine Chapel on Star Trek, Hudec married Gene Roddenberry. The song “Gene” was written by Nichols and performed at Roddenberry’s funeral when his health was failing.
He sought conservatorship in 2018 after a legal dispute arose over the actions of her manager-turned-caretaker Gilbert Bell. Angelique Fawcette, a friend of Nichols who had expressed concern in 2017 about Bell’s control of access to her, pushed for visitation rights before a court granted Johnson’s petition in January 2019. Bell’s lawsuit against Nichols in 2019 for eviction from his guesthouse on Nichols’ property was still ongoing in August 2021.
Husband
Second marriage: Nichelle Nichols has had two. wikipedia, a dancer, was her first husband (1917–1981). When they wed in 1951, they divorced that year. Kyle Johnson was born on August 14, 1951, to Johnson and Nichols. 1968 was the year she wed Duke Mondy for the second time. In 1972, they called it quits and got a divorce. Nichelle Nichols was unmarried as of mid-2022.
Cause of death
Nichelle Nichols was admitted to a Los Angeles-area hospital in June 2015 after suffering a mild stroke at her Los Angeles home. She was admitted to the hospital after a magnetic resonance imaging scan confirmed that she had suffered a small stroke. Nichols announced her retirement from convention appearances in early 2018 after being diagnosed with dementia. On July 30, 2022, at the age of 89, Nichols died of natural causes in Silver City, New Mexico.
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