Key Points
Kate Mulgrew is looking back fondly on her Star Trek legacy.
The actress starred as Captain Kathryn Janeway, the first female captain to headline a Star Trek series.
“It was huge. It was unprecedented,” Mulgrew said of her debut in the role. ” It reshaped my life.”
Kate Mulgrew takes great pride in her legacy as Star Trek‘s first female captain.
More than three decades after stepping into the role of Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, the 71-year-old actress is reflecting on the seismic impact the character had on her life and beyond.
“I was the first female captain. It was huge. It was unprecedented,” Mulgrew told PEOPLE while attending the Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame’s 34th Anniversary Gala on Sept. 29. “It was breathtaking. It reshaped my life, the course of my life.”
She added, “I hope that it’s been good for the world. It certainly was good for Mulgrew.”
Mulgrew attends Paramount+’s “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” world premiere in New York last January
Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty
Captain Janeway’s adventures began with Star Trek: Voyager‘s Jan. 16, 1995, debut, introducing her as the captain of the U.S.S. Voyager, a Starfleet ship stranded in the Delta Quadrant and facing a decades-long journey home. For seven seasons, she guided her team through unfamiliar worlds, hard decisions, and huge discoveries.
Janeway’s role on the show as not just a leader but a scientist became a point of inspiration for many young viewers interested in exploring STEM fields, and to this day Mulgrew is gratified to have played any role at all in those journeys.
“I loved Kathryn Janeway, and I think what she allowed women in STEM to do as a result of her command was absolutely, deeply significant in the world of science and also in the world of men who theretofore had not really regarded either Star Trek or STEM as women’s business,” Mulgrew told the outlet.
Mulgrew’s connection to Captain Janeway is significant for another reason: she was not the actress originally cast in the critical role. Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold was slated to sit in Star Trek: Journeyr’s coveted captain’s chair, but stepped away early in the process after just two days of filming.
At the time, The New York Times reported that the “rigors of episodic television were too demanding” for Bujold. (Star Trek in particular was known for long days of filming.) Bujold’s abrupt exit added yet more stigma to the idea of a female Starfleet captain, giving naysayers more fuel for their fire. But when Mulgrew came aboard, she was determined to prove them wrong and give Janeway the best debut possible.
Mulgrew on ‘Star Trek: Voyager’
Credit: James Minchin / TV GUIDE / Paramount Television / Courtesy: Everett Collection
“That was the great concern,” Mulgrew recalled while reflecting on Janeway’s legacy during a January chat with TVLine. “Could a woman be as palatable to a male demographic as Picard or Kirk? First season, it was challenging. There was great attention paid to my physicality — my look, my hair — when all I wanted was to find the source of her command.”
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She continued, “I became anxious until I went to the producers and said, ‘Please stop fooling around with my hair and let me find this woman. Then the men will come.’ And that’s what happened.”
Mulgrew said that the support was “slow-moving” because of all the anxiety surrounding the first female captain in the franchise, but added that in the end, “I won this game because I’m a strong actress, and I loved Janeway. The men slowly divested themselves of their concern and allowed themselves to come to me as their captain.”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
Source: www.yahoo.com
