NYCC STAR TREK INTERVIEWS: Kate Mulgrew

Kate Mulgrew plays Hologram Janeway in STAR TREK: PRODIGY. Images: Paramount+ / Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images.

DSTN was invited to take part in a press roundtable with the cast and creators of Star Tek: Prodigy at this past weekend’s New York Comic Con. For these roundtables, seven news outlets are put at a table together and given 15 minutes to ask whatever questions they wish, in a “round robin” style. Then the celebrity moves to the next table to be replaced by a new one. This week we’ll be releasing these interviews, one by one. For the most part, each outlet got one question or two, depending on how lengthy the answers were, so not all the questions covered were asked by DSTN.

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OCTOBER 12, 2022 - Kate Mulgrew played Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager. Now, 22 years later, she’s a hologram of her former character on a starship commanded by children in the animated Star Trek: Prodigy. Mulgrew herself is just as you would hope: funny, thoughtful, and forthright. She doesn’t mince words and she knows how to work a crowd (or, in this case, a table full of journalists.)

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On transitioning from being a human to being a hologram:

It took some adjusting, of course. It’s a hologram we’re talking about. So the challenge was, how do I endow this hologram with interesting traits without making her a sort of, I don’t know, a cardboard copy of what once was? So I very slowly tried to place humor; warmth; even some degree of discernment, she likes some, she doesn’t really trust others; opinions, and I’ve developed that slowly. But I’ve tried to ground her. [Raises hand] She gets this barometer, Hologram Janeway. [Raises hand higher] Vice Admiral gets this. So I just run the gamut when I’m given that shot. And often I have scenes when they’re back-to-back, so I get to switch on and switch off, which is really challenging and really fun.

Hologram Janeway is a little lighter in tone so that the children are listening to me with a certain degree of comfort. Because I think if you deepen it and you go to the admiral, you’re going to turn them off. So I have to do this all according to what’s going on in my imagination. It’s fun.

I was surprised at the freedom in the booth. A lot of freedom.

On her favorite moment to play in the forthcoming second half of season 1:

Well, I think it’s a spoiler if I say it. Let me just suggest this: there are several iterations of Janeway. And some of them are dark and unexpected. And then the journey takes a harrowing turn, and that was really fun.

On (not) working with Robert Beltran (Chakotay):

I didn’t work with him. I didn’t even hear his voice. No, it’s just line, and then I do line, and line, and line. I haven’t seen him. That’s like old Hollywood, the Golden Days when they go into the recording booth and there’d be two or three of us, you know? Those days are over. COVID made sure of that. Maybe there will be an opportunity when Robert and I can get together because I love him, but that’s the way it is now.

And it’s enough to remember [his voice]. It’s certainly enough. It’s all in the writing. And the writing is exquisite. Thank God for the Hageman brothers.

On (not) working from home:

I have to go into a studio. I demand it. And they do, too. The quality of this is so high. I don’t do any of it at home. That’s for the birds. I want the exquisite calibration of the engineers in the other room. I want to know that every pitch that I’m striving for, every note, every intention is perfectly recorded. And I just don’t believe that in my bathroom, with cardboard up on the wall and taped t0 the window, it’s going to have the same effect. I don’t believe in it. No. I don’t like any of the stuff at home. Go to work! You know what I mean? Go to work!

On whether Janeway’s search for Chakotay is personal or professional:

Well, this is the essence of Janeway. They’re inseparable. Her investment was always personal. Even if it’s Species 8472, whom she loathed. In the end, she sort of felt sorry for them. Look at Seven of Nine, how deeply personal it became. So if I’m trying to find Chakotay, you’d better believe the investment is going to be huge, and the payoff is going to be, after many bumps and many twists and after many difficult turns, rewarding. I hope, but I don’t know.

On voice acting compared to acting on soap opera Ryan’s Hope:

That was a hundred years ago! You know, I was only on that thing for three years. [Voice acting] is much easier. It’s much, much easier. It’s very freeing, very liberating, and I’m collaborating with Kevin and Dan Hageman, who are not only genius-level creators and writers, but they’re so good and decent men. When I’m working with them, I just feel that I can do anything and that we’re in it together. And I’ve seldom felt this level of collaboration. Because live action is very intense. Even “Orange is the New Black,” where there was a lot of stuff going on, it’s just, “Hit your mark; cut; print; moving on.” Get a take, maybe get two takes, at most get two takes. Here we work, we play, “Can I get another one,” “I’d like to try this.” They never say no. And they always say, “Try this then, let’s go here.” And it just makes it great fun.

On working alone:

It’s me with those guys [the Hagemans] on Zoom. And it’s fine. I’m living within the confines of my own imagination. What’s wrong with that? That’s my job, anyway. Usually, we go out and an audience attends in some way or another, and on a sound stage, the camera acts as that. But I have to use my own judgment and my own mind and for some reason, it’s very confidence-instilling. It’s very relaxing. I mean, I can really feel like I can go anywhere.

When you walk on a stage in front of 1500 people, which I’ve done a lot in my life, there’s a nervousness that constricts the diaphragm so that even if we’re playing Clytemnestra [in a high, squeaky voice] it can sound like that. [voice back to normal] You know what I mean? In the sound booth, there’s nobody there, so I’m relaxed, it’s flowing through my vocal cords, the larynx is free, the jaw’s relaxed and I can [vocally] go up, I cand go down, I can go over and emoting comes very, very easily.

On the choice of Janeway to introduce a new generation of fans to Star Trek:

Of course. Who else could it be? She’s a great choice. They were smart. Alex Kurtzman was smart to ask me because I think he understood something that even I could not see, which is why he’s the visionary and now has assumed the mantel of all the franchise. I think he knew that the mother would say to the five-year-old child, “We’re going to watch ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ and I’m going to tell you who that person is.” The child’s going to understand that it’s Hologram Janeway, but the mother is going to support it with her knowledge of captains. I think that was the whole intention, to make it a cross-generational passionate conversation. And that will be an extraordinary conversation, won’t it?

On what Mulgrew brought to the table as Hologram Janeway:

The humor, and not softness, not tenderness, but empathy. This hologram has empathy for these kids. I mean, they’re all in trouble. Especially Dal, who has suffered, arguably, more than all of them put together. And so Hologram Janeway is going to have to be the exerciser of diplomacy and of wisdom when it comes to dealing with a guy like Dal, who is so sure he is going to die that he does everything to upend it. Again, it’s a personal investment, but it has to be, always, grounded in the fact that I’m here to teach them Starfleet skills, the Prime Directive. “Take each other’s hands, and let’s get going. You can’t do this alone.” If only we knew that as a species, but we don’t know it, do we? We cannot do this alone.

On what the dynamic will be like when Vice Admiral Janeway meets Hologram Janeway:

Well, we’ll see. I mean, wouldn’t you say Vice Admiral Janeway has matured deeply, she’s very seasoned at this stage of the game. She would be slightly dismissive of the hologram, until that hologram convinces her that it should be otherwise.

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Tomorrow’s interview: Brett Gray (Dal).