Close To Home With Captain Janeway - continue

by Michelle Erica Green

There have been rumors every year of Voyager's imminent return to the
Alpha Quadrant, but it seems more likely now, with Deep Space Nine going
off the air at the end of this season. "I think if they go that way,
they'll probably do it at the very end of this season, so that we can have
at least a full year to explore those possibilities," noted the actress.
"There's still a lot to explore out here. I'd like to have a really scary
enemy who dupes me in the most clever way - I thought that might be
Species 8472, but I don't think it's going to be. They might even take
Janeway down a little bit, really down, down to loss of self-esteem." 

It seems that Janeway has already lost some self-esteem in her ongoing
struggle with the mule-headed but often heroic Seven of Nine, whose
presence last season was much-promoted by the network at the expense of
Janeway and the other characters. The addition of the buxom Borg gave the
show a great deal of publicity and allowed some new storylines, but many
of the actors have been vocal about their displeasure with the obsessive
attention to her, particularly since the ratings did not increase as the
media hype suggested (see Mania's recent interviews with Robert Duncan
McNeill and Robert Picardo for more on this issue). Mulgrew is diplomatic
but echoes the sentiment that there has been too much Seven of Nine, with
entirely too much attention paid to Jeri Ryan's physical attributes rather
than her skills as an actress. 

"I understand that UPN was very anxious to establish this character, to
get the ratings up and so on and so forth. Mission accomplished, and now
we have to go back to what makes Voyager really compelling, which are the
nine characters telling the story," she said flatly.  "We've shot six
episodes this season, and it's everybody but Seven - and but me, too,
everybody's going to get their due. I cautioned them, and I think they
know that balance must be restored - it's just very important that we tell
the story of this group of people, and it in no ways becomes exclusive to
one or two, because then it really loses its heart." 

Chemistry is important, the actress admits, but everybody on the cast
needs to be given opportunities to shine - "actors will very often rise to
the occasion when they're given big chances." There hasn't been a big
Janeway episode filmed yet this season, yet Mulgrew says she's important
in all of them. "I don't think she needs to have big episodes. She's big.
I'm in everybody's life. I run the ship, more so now than ever before." 

Though Seven gave the Captain a lot of backtalk last season,
countermanding orders and taking action without permission, the dynamic is
changing: "She's arrogant, but less so - I certainly think Seven will calm
down, to put it bluntly," Mulgrew declared. "I think I've come to trust
her more, but Janeway takes her down a lot this season. It can spin in any
direction, given her mood or mine ... so she can rub me the wrong way, I
can rub her the wrong way. But I'm not going to abandon her or she'll die.
I brought her on board, so I have to do all this." 
                      
Mulgrew expressed the importance of bringing B'Elanna Torres back to the
forefront after her absence due to actress Roxann Dawson's pregnancy last
year. "Roxann has just finished the most wonderful episode - Brannon wrote
an episode for that character which is about clinical depression, which
was so gorgeous, I cried. In no way did the story suffer, there was a
wonderful B plot and a horrible alien and all that, but we really got to
see B'Elanna, and Roxann really was gorgeous in it." 

The balance of character story and science makes Mulgrew very happy. 
"Brannon knows that great writing is both things, the inside and the
outside. What motivates the character and then what in fact the character
does. That's good storytelling - he has that hook."  The actress describes
the dialogue as "dry and quick - the unexpected and therefore delightful,
especially in long briefing room scenes." 

She went on to say that Braga understands subtext and "accepts that when
people are agitated for a long period of time, they might not act like
everybody else. He's going to take advantage of that. He is allowing the
characters to make cracks, which believe me after four years in outer
space they'd be making all over the place." So Janeway may come out of her
ready room looking disheveled. "She's had too much coffee. She's pissed.
She's human." 

UPN has been employing Mulgrew as an ambassador of sorts, sending her to
various cities to do promotional work and encouraging her appearances with
scientific and artistic organizations that look to Janeway and to herself
as a role model, particularly for women. She is also involved in a great
deal of charity work - along with Rosie O'Donnell and Geraldo Rivera, she
helped raise nearly $2 million for Incarnation Children's Center in New
York, and was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for Sojourn, a women's
shelter in Southern California.  Mulgrew will be appearing this fall at a
fundraiser in Seattle to help provide computers and internet access to
underprivileged children. 

She also starred in Fiddler's Moon, a movie of the week for UPN's new
feature on Thursday nights debuting this fall. Though there is a science
fiction twist at the end of the film, Mulgrew described it as "really a
relationship movie - a story about a woman and her son who's suffering
from spina bifida, and her resurgence of faith through him."  Her
character has a romance with a man played by Corbin Bernson, "which was
terrific, I really enjoyed him. And a month filming in Luxembourg, in the
south of France, was great." 

The movie was her major project over hiatus from Voyager. Mulgrew spent
the rest of the time catching up with her family: cooking for her two
sons, sailing with her mother up the Aegean Sea, and visiting her sister
in London while she was in Europe. "I took the boys to New York, where I
hosted this evening for Sumner Redstone [the CEO of Viacom]. Then I came
back and got to work, the minute I got home.  I've just been flying
around, doing my job. It's a good life." 

Doesn't sound all that different from Kathryn Janeway's, except the
latter's "children" are her crewmembers. No wonder the actress and
character seem to be merging. 

to the Voyager crew page. to the Star Trek page.