Star Trek: Voyager star Kate Mulgrew is nearly as famous for her life post-Voyager as she is for her groundbreaking role as Star Trek’s first female captain. This week, the crew of Women at Warp talked to Mulgrew about her career as Janeway and after, and what’s next for her as an actor and an author.

First they tackled Mulgrew’s two books, Born with Teeth (2016) and How to Forget (2019). When asked what drew her to writing memoirs, Mulgrew replied, “I wanted to write a book so as to attempt the literary process. [...] I was in my late fifties, and memoir came naturally to me and so did How to Forget, the second book. It was just sort of a, not a natural byproduct at first, but it sort of evoked a necessity in me.” She continued, hinting at what’s next in her literary career, “The second book was written, I think, as a result of having written the first, and the next one will be fiction.”

Later in the interview, Sue and Jarrah from Women at Warp asked Mulgrew what she hopes new Voyager viewers might take away from the series. She replied, “Well, of course I want them to take away the humanity I hope I brought to the franchise in playing the first female captain. [...] I would like to think that we've left people with [...] an excited and stimulated imagination, a love of science, and a confidence that women are capable of anything.”

Mulgrew also revealed her next project, a play called The Half Life of Marie Curie, coming later this year to the Minetta Theatre in New York. Mulgrew said of the role, “Marie Curie had a great friend whose name was Hertha Ayrton [...] a renowned scientist in her own right. That's the part that I'm playing. And it's the story of what happened to Marie Curie after Pierre's death, when she'd had a love affair with Paul Langevin and had been ostracized to the scientific community, and she was dying from radium poisoning and Hertha Ayrton saved her life. So it's the story of that chapter in their lives and it's quite lovely.”

You can listen to the entire interview on Women at Warp: A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast now. That’s available on podcasts.roddenberry.com, or at womenatwarp.com.

This article was written for the podcast Daily Star Trek News.

Alison Pitt is the writer, producer, and host of Daily Star Trek News, on the Roddenberry Podcast Network. A veteran Star Trek podcaster, she started her career on the weekly show Priority One: A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast in 2015. She has appeared on panels at Star Trek Las Vegas, WonderCon, and San Diego Comic Con.