Mary Chieffo

Biography

Mary Chieffo is a queer actor/producer known internationally as the Klingon Commander turned Chancellor L’Rell on the award-winning Paramount+ series Star Trek: Discovery, most recently returning as her iconic character for the highly popular Star Trek Online.

When she wasn’t covered in prosthetics and speaking Klingon, Mary produced, wrote, and starred as Iago in Operation Othello – a feminist, gender, and color-conscious Virtual Reality adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello alongside Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions in the spring of 2018 (Official Cannes XR and Raindance XR Selection).

Chieffo received her BFA from Juilliard in 2015, flourishing in her passion for classic text and reveling in the opportunity to take on strong female and male roles in Shakespeare canon, including King Lear, Queen Elizabeth, and the title role in Erica Schmidt’s all-female Macbeth. For her exceptional work in the four-year program, Juilliard presented Mary with the prestigious Elizabeth Smith Voice and Speech Prize and the Saint-Denis Prize for “Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Drama.”

Chieffo came out publicly as a lesbian on the red carpet prior to the Star Trek Day event held September 8, 2021, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, California. A few days later, she confirmed via her Twitter feed that she was dating writer and actor Madi Goff.