Star Trek Beyond's Zachary Quinto remembered his late co-star Anton Yelchin while appearing at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Yelchin, who played Chekov in the Star Trek movies, died unexpectedly on 19 June at the age of 27.

Calling Yelchin a "beautiful guy", Quinto said, " I don't even know how to talk about it. We already knew that this would be a bittersweet experience because of the loss of Leonard [Nimoy] last year, but this has just been absolutely devastating for all of us,"

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Quinto added that he knew Yelchin for nine years, from when they shot the first remake of the series, Star Trek in 2007. "I think our goal has to be to just celebrate his incredible life and honor him as much as we can. It was a terrible loss not only to us personally, but I think to the industry and audiences. He was such a talent, " Quinto added.

When asked if the Star Trek cast has become like a family, he said, "I think we take it for granted in a lot of ways because we genuinely love each other so much. But we are truly intertwined inextricably and I think we always will be."

"We laugh like nobody's business, but we're very lucky to have each other — there's no question about it. I think we are genuinely connected on a really true and authentic level as a cast and as friends, even when we're not filming the movies," he added.

The Justin Lin-directed movie cast includes Chris Pine (Captain Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), Karl Urban (James 'Bones' McCoy), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), John Cho (Sulu), Simon Pegg (Scotty), Anton Yelchin (Chekov) and Idris Elba (Krall). Star Trek Beyond opens in theatres on 22 July.