Star Trek: Picard adds How to Get Away with Murder star to the cast

Amirah Vann is set to join Star Trek: Picard in episode four of the first season. Which character will she be playing?

Star Trek: Picard is only three episodes old and its cast is already growing. Amirah Vann, whose credits include Queen Sugar, Underground and How to Get Away with Murder, among many others, will be warping into the show. Vann is set to play Zani, who Deadline reports “is a member of the Qowat Milat, a fierce all-female Romulan religious order who live on the colony planet of Vashti.” Her character appears to be a mentor to Evan Evagora’s yet-to-be-seen Elnor, the only male member of the order.

How the Qowat Milat intersects with the secret Zhat Vash is not known. The latter group was introduced in episode two of Star Trek: Picard, as insurgents who have infiltrated every level of Starfleet.

Vann has been a veritable scene-stealer as a regular on the Shondaland production of How to Get Away with Murder, a remarkable feat considering she shares many of her scenes with Viola Davis. She is a powerhouse performer and will hopefully add plenty of depth to the notoriously evil Romulans. Her casting is also a welcome addition to the diversity on the show. So far, the optics of Star Trek: Picard have been outrageously poor – there are fewer characters of color on this show than on Star Trek: The Next Generation, which aired in the late 1980s.

Isa Briones’ Dahj/Soji is the only character of color in the main cast, and she went from a hapless woman killed in the premiere, to playing a naive scientist aboard the Borg Reclamation Site. More characters of color appeared in the final moments of ‘Maps and Legends’, with Commodore Oh (Tamlyn Tomita) and Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd) entering the story. As of episode two, Santiago Cabrera, who is of Latino origin, still hadn’t appeared on the show, despite being part of the main cast. We shouldn’t be having these conversations in 2020, that too regarding Star Trek, of all franchises, but here we are.

While there’s still another week for Vann’s arrival on Star Trek: Picard, episode three is now available on CBS All Access.