‘Section 31’ Director Olatunde Osunsanmi On Crafting A Fun Spy Adventure In Star Trek’s Lost Era – TrekMovie.com

Olatunde Osunsanmi spent five seasons as the producing director for Star Trek: Discovery, and so he was tasked with directing Star Trek: Section 31, the streaming movie that carries on the story of Emperor Georgiou from Discovery. At New York Comic Con, TrekMovie spoke Osunsanmi in a roundtable interview with other media outlets, where he gave us an outline of the movie, its characters, and how it is different than Discovery. He also discussed the challenge of making Phillipa Georgiou sympathetic, and where exactly the organization of Section 31 fits in within the Starfleet we know and love. [WARNING: Interview contains some spoilers]

So how would you describe this movie?

This is an action adventure-movie set in the Star Trek world, and it follows a group of operatives that are the CIA of Starfleet in Section 31 and they are on a mission out on the edge of the galaxy, in an area where Starfleet is not allowed and not able to operate. And they go over there with Philippa Georgiou, played by Michelle Yeoh, and Kacey Rohl, who plays Rachel Garrett, and they kick ass. And it’s a lot of fun. And we’re really excited for you guys to see it.

With a young Rachel Garrett, you’re in a “lost era” of Trek [between the TOS movies and The Next Generation]. So did that give you more freedom to play?

It gave a little bit of freedom. But I don’t feel like you ever have that much freedom within Star Trek, because it doesn’t belong to us. Frequently when I’m writing and directing something, that’s mine and I’m sharing it with the audience and with the public and everybody else. But within Star Trek, it’s yours, it’s the audience’s. And I grew up watching Star Trek. But now that I’m making it, I have to make it for everybody else, solely, in a lot of ways. Sure, I get joy out of it too. But yeah, we had to be very careful to say, ‘Okay, we’re not quite yet at TNG and we’re not TOS.’ And so where’s the technology? And how does that work? And how does it feel real for the time period we’re trying to represent?

Can you give a flavor to the circumstances under which we first meet the characters?

I can’t say anything. They’re on a mission. They’re on a mission as spy/intelligence gathering organization and doing Section 31 things.

Omari Hardwick [Alok] and Rob Kazinsky [Zeph] are also here at NYCC, what can you tell us about their characters?

Alok is the is the team leader, and he is on a wonderful journey of self-discovery as well as figuring out who he is and why he’s here, and he’s a veritable badass. And Rob is a is playing Zeph, and he is a guy who has an exoskeleton on him that allows him to do a pretty incredible things, strength-wise, and also use the technology of the exoskeleton to manipulate the areas around him. And he’s a lot of fun. He throws a lot of jokes. Both of them were tailor-made to these roles and I think you’re really going to enjoy everything.

What do you say to Star Trek fans who are worried about about the tone of Section 31 versus the optimistic Star Trek view?

Section 31 always brings up those emotions in Star Trek fans, for understandable reasons. What we can say is we worked really hard to make sure we kept up the ideals of optimism and kept up the ideals of what do we want our society to be in the future, and in the end, Section 31 is good, and it’s fun and it’s a joy. Hopefully they’re pleasantly surprised.

We’ve seen Section 31 in different eras. We’ve seen it completely secretive, and then everybody knows about it. Where is it in this era? 

That’s a that’s a tough one to answer, because of the timeline that we’re sort of playing with here. It’s interesting because Section 31 it’s—depending on which Star Trek series you come into, different people within Starfleet and the Federation know different things about it, and there’s a lot of conspiracy and angst about that. I can say that with this one, we’re inside of Section 31, so the people within the story certainly know a lot about what the organization is.

Is there any sort of real-world analogy of how Starfleet and Section 31 interact? What is that relationship like? Is it like the CIA?

I would say yes, Section 31 is to Starfleet what the CIA is to the Pentagon, or the CIA is to the military complex of the United States. I almost want to find a different analogy depending on which era you talk about. You could also say Section 31 is to Starfleet what the “Legacy Program” is to the Pentagon. And you’re probably like “What is the Legacy Program?” Like, say, Deep Space Nine, when Section 31 was first introduced, not everybody knew what Section 31 was. And the Legacy Program handles UAPs [unidentified anomalous phenomena] for the United States of America, UFOs. And it’s just now starting to come out what the Legacy Program is, because of different whistleblowers like David Grush or [Luis] Elizondo. The more we find out about it, the more it’s like “Oh my god, they do that?” That doesn’t sound very United States. And Section 31 is “Oh my god, that doesn’t sound very Starfleet or Federation.” And you hold up the ideals, but they do all the stuff that Starfleet can’t, or won’t, or doesn’t want to admit to having to do. And our movie isn’t that dark. Our movie is fun and full of life, and it’s also inspiration. And that was a delicate balance to to walk, particularly with a lead character like Philippa Georgiou.

We see some of we see a young Georgiou in the teaser trailer… Are we going to see a lot of that? 

You’ll get a healthy dose of young Georgiou. And it’s always kind of nice to see when you’re looking at the characters you love, where they came from. I’m trying not to give too much away.

And is that so to help viewers maybe become more sympathetic to who she became? Will we get some deeper understanding of her through that?

You will, yeah. You’ll get a deeper understanding of why she is who she is. And hopefully, you’ll sympathize with that as well.

We’re coming up on five years since this was first announced as a spin-off series. When did you first get attached to it? And how would you say the scope of the project has changed?

I was attached to it from the get-go. Alex [Kurtzman] approached me and asked if I would direct and come aboard and do it. And Craig Sweeny, the writer, delivered a draft at the time, and it was a TV show. We had a lot of people that were involved in Discovery involved as well, and, and so we’re all really excited. And I spoke with Michelle [Yeoh] and the studio, and then for a variety of reasons and schedules and conflicts, and it just kept falling apart.

And Michelle became the busiest actress in Hollywood.

That’s right. But you know what, she stuck with it. And it’s better, actually, that we had to wait to get it made, because the story kept changing and getting better and better and being nipped and tucked. And then we ended up with a movie, and we ended up with an unbelievable cast around Michelle that we never would have had. The characters are totally different from the TV show. So the cast we ended up with is, for me, it was Christmas morning every time I came to set, and that would not have happened if we’d made it five years ago.

Ash Tyler from Discovery [left in charge of Section 31 in season 3] could have been a part of this. Is there a reason why he wasn’t?

We love Shazad [Latif]. The way Section 31 works and the way it was fighting wars, and part of the Temporal Wars, that could have worked out. But that was just a function of the rewrites. He just didn’t fit into this particular story. But we would have loved to have him.

So this isn’t a theatrical feature, but it’s a two-hour movie with an Oscar winner in the lead. So how does it feel different for you from a big two-parter Discovery episode?

Well, because it’s one complete story. The wonderful thing about Section 31 being a movie and not a TV show is it’s just one complete story. And so I get to chart and do all my script analysis and tie everything together by the end. And you know, in the actual shooting of it, it was great, because when you shoot a TV show you’re maxing out the crew, the cast, to about 80% of what they can handle, because it’s a marathon. You don’t want to burn them out, right? Because you’re  going over 10 hours of material, or 14 hours of material, whatever it may be over the course of the year on a movie, you can max everybody out to 100% because it’s gonna be over in a couple months. And the exhaustion, everyone can recover from the exhaustion. And I pushed them, I pushed them all. And so what was really great about Section 31 the movie was, we got to push everything to the extreme. You know, whether that be emotion, performances, action, you name it, we got to, we got to max it out. I don’t get to do that very often.

You have a very distinctive directing style on Discovery. So did you carry that over? Or did you take influences from other kinds of genre movies or anything else?

I took all of my experiences on Discovery on the logistics side and carried it over. But then a lot of my instincts on the creative side, visual side, I broke down. I broke myself down, and then built myself up again based off the script that Craig Sweeny wrote so that it felt new and fresh. Because one of the things I think Alex Kurtzman has done really well in continuing this franchise is creating different flavors of Star Trek. And this was a different flavor that he wanted to present, you know, it’s like ice cream, you know, you know, we got multiple flavors, and hopefully the Trek audience loves this flavor as well. So it was really important to me to do something different.

Is it, in fact, two hours? Are you still editing it?

It’s just under two hours, actually. We’ve locked the cut, and we’re in ADR sound, visual effects, color, we’re on the home stretch.

Even though it’s a self-contained movie, is the door open to tell more stories with it afterwards?

Oh absolutely, yeah. The door is wide open. You all just have to love it.

NOTE: Interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Section 31 movie in January

Star Trek: Section 31 will premiere on Friday, January 24, 2025, exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and international markets where the service is available. In the movie, Michelle Yeoh reprises her Star Trek: Discovery role as Emperor Philippa Georgiou who joins Section 31, a secret division of Starfleet. According to the brief synopsis: “Tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, she also must face the sins of her past.”

Section 31 also stars Omari Hardwick (Power), Kacey Rohl (Hannibal), Emmy® winner Sam Richardson (Ted Lasso), Sven Ruygrok (One Piece), Robert Kazinsky (Pacific Rim), Humberly Gonzalez (Ginny & Georgia) and James Hiroyuki Liao (Barry). Miku Martineau (Kate) portrays a young Philippa Georgiou.

More from NYCC

Check out our coverage of the Star Trek Universe panel, which also included the Section 31 movie, Starfleet Academy, and Strange New Worlds.

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