A 'Walking Dead' favorite is the new lead on 'Star Trek: Discovery'

Star Trek: Discovery has found its lead.

It's Walking Dead actress Sonequa Martin-Green, Mashable has confirmed. She will be the first African-American woman to lead a Star Trek cast, fulfilling executive producer Bryan Fuller's goal for a female lead that would ideally be played by a woman of color.

Martin-Green will continue to appear in her regular role as Sasha on The Walking Dead in addition to starring in Discovery.

The actress joins previously announced cast members Michelle Yeoh, Doug Jones and Anthony Rapp, who will all serve as Starfleet officers, along with Chris Obi, Shazad Latif and Mary Chieffo, who are portraying Klingons.

Martin-Green's lead character will not be the ship's captain, as in previous iterations of the series, and will instead serve as a lieutenant commander aboard the Discovery, because, as Fuller explained to reporters in August, "We’ve seen six series from captains’ points of view."

Instead, he was interested in exploring "a character from a different perspective, who has a different dynamic with the captain, with subordinates," he said at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in August.

At the time, Fuller described Martin-Green's character as possessing “a strength and sensitivity and an amusing neurosis that goes with exploring space."

He added, “In order to understand something that’s completely alien from her, she has to understand herself. It’s so easy to look at someone different from ourselves and think how we would think in their shoes, but we cannot imagine how they’d think because we are not them. It’s part of the character’s journey in this first season.”

Fuller has since stepped back from showrunner duties on the series to focus on his commitments to American Gods and a number of other projects in development, but is still attached to the series as an executive producer. Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts are now showrunning and executive producing alongside Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, Heather Kadin, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth.

Star Trek: Discovery is scheduled to premiere in May on CBS, with subsequent episodes available exclusively on CBS All Access.

CBS All Access and CBS Television Studios declined to comment on the news, which was first reported by Entertainment Weekly.