Fandom Mulgrew Interview Part II

Anna L. Kaplan of Fandom.com has posted the second half of her interview with Kate Mulgrew (Janeway). This week they discuss topics such as how it'll feel to say goodbye to the show, the behind-the-scenes antics of the cast and the Janeway/Chakotay relationship.

The ability to make Mulgrew laugh is one of the things that contributes to the Chakotay-Janeway onscreen chemistry. Exploration of that relationship was one of Voyager's missed opportunities in Mulgrew's opinion, an opinion that is shared by many fans. "It's a wonderful chemistry," says Mulgrew. "You might be surprised to know that he just kills me; Robert Beltran makes me laugh so. All of that was kind of missing. Beltran himself makes me laugh, so they could have really built that in. He is the one who could exalt her mood and lighten her up, he knows her so well, the intricacies of her nature. I think that we could have investigated the Chakotay and Janeway relationship with a little more incisiveness, could have taken it further.

"I am not talking about romantically. I am talking about intimately. What is the nature of their friendship? How deeply do they need each other? How have they come to rely on one another? Do they love one another? Those things I think could have been played with more. But there is very little time. You are talking about 48 minutes. It's a science fiction show. We usually have to deal with our A and B plots pretty thoroughly. So that's why I suppose it was a bit neglected."

Mulgrew has very few regrets beyond that unexplored relationship, things that she missed during Voyager's seven-year course. She does say, "I think they could have pushed the gender thing. They could have pushed the envelope with my being a woman in ways that I am not entirely sure they did. Of course they were honoring Roddenberry's concept that we transcend gender. But at the same time, I think it would have been fun if upon occasion she'd come up against a misogynist who had equal power to hers. They could have really played that one out. But we really never did that. I regret that, and perhaps that's in the future. I don't know. They may have that up their sleeve. All in all I've been a pretty busy cookie, so I don't think I've had any time for regrets."

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