Murderbot: Who is Dr. Mensah in the Apple TV+ series? Character details explored

Apple TV+'s ongoing science fiction action comedy series Murderbot debuted on May 16, 2025, and is based on Martha Wells' book series, The Murderbot Diaries.

The show stars Alexander Skarsgård, Noma Dumezweni, David Dastmalchian, Tamara Podemski, Akshay Khanna and Sabrina Wu in the main roles.

The Apple TV+ series follows the titular media-obsessed private security cyborg who accidentally acquires free will after hacking its own programming. However, it must hide this newfound freedom and pretend to cooperate with humans.

The titular bot is hired by Dr. Ayda Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), a terraforming specialist whose team is assigned to explore an alien planet. She hires the bot for her team's protection in a hostile environment. While Dr. Mensah's team grows suspicious of Murderbot, she continues to show empathy toward it and helps it adjust within her team.

More on this in our story.

Dr. Mensah is the droid's favorite human in Murderbot. Exploring her character in the sci-fi show

Dr. Mensah, one of the most interesting and loyal characters in the Apple TV+ series, is an empathetic and decisive leader of the Preservation Alliance, whose team is tasked with exploring an alien planet that is inhabited by huge and dangerous monsters.

Dr. Mensah hires Murderbot, a SecUnit droid, to serve as her team's protector in the alien planet environment. She hires the droid due to its discounted price (as it was a refurbished model), unaware that it has hacked its own hardware and now has free will and can override her commands.

While Dr. Mensah's team does not warm towards the bot, she shows great empathy and compassion towards it and even encourages it to participate more actively in the team.

In Episode 2, while Dr. Mensah is investigating a map anomaly on a steep hill, she suffers a panic attack. Later, while she asks Murderbot to mingle with her team by lowering its helmet, she learns that the droid accessed her team's logs. Concerned about her team's safety, she questions it about the same but they are interrupted by the droid's interference.

While tech-expert Gurathin becomes highly suspicious of the droid, Dr. Mensah continuously sees the good in her robot partner and believes that it is actually trying to protect her team. She even saves it during an ambush using a mining drill and decides that it will stay with the team.

However, Dr. Mensah learns that the bot deleted critical repair data and, while she sets out to recover the data herself, she has another panic attack. Despite the bot's hacking, it calms down Dr. Mensah by making her watch an episode of Sanctuary Moon and helps her repair the hopper with its neural pathways.

Who plays Dr. Mensah in Murderbot?

South African-British actress Noma Dumezweni plays the character of Dr. Mensah in Murderbot.

She is best known for playing Queen Selina in 2023's live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid. She has also starred in films like The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and Mary Poppins Returns.

In addition, Dumezweni also has many TV show roles under her belt, including BBC's Doctor Who, HBO's Only Murders in the Building, The Undoing, Apple TV+'s Presumed Innocent and BBC Two's Black Earth Rising.

She won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 2017 for playing the role of Hermione Granger in the West End run of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. She was also nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play after she reprised her role on Broadway in 2018.

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