What Jaylah From Star Trek Beyond Looks Like In Real Life

"Star Trek Beyond" is often noted as the movie in the "Kelvin Universe" trilogy that most feels like "Star Trek: The Original Series." (See /Film's spoiler review of "Beyond" from 2016.) After the 2009 "Star Trek" and "Into Darkness" got some Trekkie criticism for making "Star Trek" into an action franchise, "Beyond" added in more optimism and exploration to counterbalance the explosions. Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) literally tells the evil raider Krall (Idris Elba), "I think you're underestimating humanity" — somewhere, "Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry smiled at that.

Yet "Beyond" also introduced a new character to mix up the Enterprise crew ensemble: the alien orphan Jaylah, played by Sofia Boutella. Her father was murdered by Krall's Swarm, so Jaylah has grown up as a scavenger on the planet Altamid. She lives in the crashed remains of the Starfleet ship the USS Franklin, and ultimately helps Kirk and co. get it spaceworthy again to stop Krall.

"Star Trek" is (in)famous for featuring "aliens" that look like humans with minimal makeup. Jaylah herself qualifies; even with her enlarged forehead, she could pass as an albino human with facial tattoos. (Her species name isn't given in the movie, but supplementary material has gone with "Tyrakhean.") Interviewed during the "Beyond" press tour, Boutella talked about Jaylah being her first role with prosthetics: "I like that second skin, I like what it brought to me, as soon as I had it on, you feel in character, I wouldn't feel anywhere near it if I didn't have it on." 

While Trekkies know her best as Jaylah, Boutella has played many other characters with and without extensive makeup.

Sofia Boutella was born in Algeria and raised both there and later in France. Her father, Safy Boutella, is a musician and record producer. Unsurprisingly, Boutella's career didn't start with acting, but with music, specifically as a dancer. Since 2001, she's appeared as a dancer in several music videos, and even in Madonna's 2007 live tour album, "The Confessions Tour: Live from London."

Boutella's dancing career kickstarted her acting; she appeared as the lead in 2012 dancing drama film, "StreetDance 2." Her next role took away from dancing, but still made use of her athleticism; she played the evil henchwoman Gazelle in 2014 film "Kingsman: The Secret Service."

"Kingsman" is a homage to the campier Bond films. Gazelle is like a feminine Jaws (Richard Kiel), the man with iron teeth; she has sharp metal prosthetics for legs — her feet are both stiletto heels and stiletto knives! To make use of her primary weapons, Gazelle has to jump around and swing her legs wide like a dancer.

Gazelle was Boutella's breakout role; without that blockbuster experience, she would've had a much harder time getting cast as Jaylah. Unfortunately, the year after "Star Trek Beyond," Boutella appeared as the undead Princess Ahmanet in 2017's woeful "The Mummy," which  was plagued with production problems and remains infamous as the first and only "Dark Universe" film. Its failure is hardly Boutella's fault; the real star isn't Ahmanet, but Tom Cruise's Nick Morton. Even so, it feels like the movie slowed down her acting career — though it didn't stop it. Most recently, Boutella appeared in Zack Snyder's "Rebel Moon" space opera films, and "Kingsman" director Matthew Vaughn cast her in his latest spy movie, 2025's "Argylle."

Jaylah's name is a homophone for J-Law, nickname for actress Jennifer Lawrence. That is not a coincidence; Boutella's character was literally named after Lawrence. Simon Pegg (who co-wrote "Star Trek Beyond" and played Enterprise engineer Scotty in it) said at a press conference for the movie that Jaylah, "a very independent female, very resourceful character," was modeled on Jennifer Lawrence's lead performance in 2010 drama film "Winter's Bone," directed by Debra Granik.

In "Winter's Bone," Lawrence plays teenager Rhee Dolly, who is under stress no child should be. Her family lives in poverty in the rural Ozarks of Missouri. Her father, arrested for dealing meth, has disappeared and should he fail to meet his court date, his house will be seized by law enforcement. Rhee has to find a way to raise money to prevent that while also raising her younger siblings. Worse, her father's criminal associates are dogging her. Like Rhee, Jaylah is an orphan who's had to scrounge out a living in an unwelcoming environment. The absence of their fathers' also hangs over both women's lives.

According to Pegg, he, his co-writer Doug Jung, and "Beyond" director Justin Lin first referred to the character who became Jaylah as "Jennifer Lawrence in 'Winter's Bone.'" That label served to remind them of what kind of character they wanted to write. The name evolved into "J-Law," and then eventually into "Jaylah" to make the Jennifer Lawrence connection slightly less blatant.

At the end of "Star Trek Beyond," Jaylah has an open invitation to join Starfleet Academy, which could have set her up to return as a full-fledged Enterprise crew member in a fourth movie. But that fourth movie never came.

"Star Trek Beyond" underwhelmed at the box office, bringing in $343 million on an $185 million budget. Simon Pegg, for his part, blamed the marketing, particularly the first "Beyond" trailer that spoiled the surprise of the movie featuring the Beastie Boys' song "Sabotage." As such, no "Star Trek 4" with the rebooted cast ever entered production and the latest news indicates the Kelvin timeline is dead.

In July 2025 at the STLV: Trek To Vegas convention, Pegg discussed (as reported by TrekMovie) another abandoned plan: a spin-off about Jaylah, titled "Jaylah and the Wolf."

"We had this idea that Jaylah was going to go Starfleet Academy and she was going to be put into a group of cadets who were like problem cadets, who were called 'The Wolf Pack' and they were sent off to a real planet called Wolf 359 and would get into an adventure on this planet. Yeah, for a while we were working on that, but in the end, it just didn't happen."

"Star Trek" fans will recognize the name Wolf 359 from the truly iconic "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode, "The Best of Both Worlds." The episode features a Borg Cube destroying 39 Starfleet ships at the Battle of Wolf 359 (integral to the backstory of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" lead, Avery Brooks' Ben Sisko). As Pegg noted, Wolf 359 is a real star and solar system.