Mulgrew Speaks On Children, Theatre and Plans

Kate Mulgrew spoke at the Creation convention in Las Vegas last month about her changing priorities as she reached the age of 50, her fondest recollections of Star Trek and what it's been like being Katharine Hepburn on stage for the past several years.

In a transcript of her talk at Totally Kate!, Mulgrew related that she had just returned from several weeks' vacation in Ireland with her 21-year-old son, with whom she had intended to write poetry, of which "I wrote eight...he wrote, however, fifty, and some rather splendid stories." Calling her life "charmed", she said that she intended to give back to victims of Alzheimer's and domestic violence and put slightly less of an emphasis on her career.

"My husband's impetus...is a life of public service," she explained. "They're asking him to look into the Senate seat – all of which fills me with a certain kind of dread. He turns sixty next year – the lucky dog! And I feel that I must protect him a little bit. But I would honor him if he chose to pursue another campaign." Known for making political comments, the actress said she thought Captain Janeway would "beam somebody out" to end the Iraq war.

Mulgrew answered more than one question about Janeway, saying that she had to employ strict discipline when she played the character and was concerned that the target audience would regard her as maternal. "I realized that the circumspection that I had to bring to Janeway is absolutely the thing I am proudest of," she said. "You don't follow a captain whom you cannot trust emotionally. There must be a certain very simple detachment." She joked about "Threshold" the episode "in which I gave birth to fifty-two lizards", though she bristled when a fan suggested that the writing for Janeway had been rather schizophrenic.

Asked whether she preferred acting onstage to acting in the theatre, Mulgrew replied, "I used to watch Jeri Ryan with the camera. There was a real love affair between the two of them. I mean this honestly, and I mean it in a flattering way. She knew that camera, she trusted it, she brought it to her...I used to go in to the camera at five-thirty in the morning and say, 'Are we going to get along today?' Because it's an instrument." She said she preferred live interaction to that.

Reiterating that she was not a fan of Hepburn until she began to do research for Tea at Five, Mulgrew laughed that she would never have been considered for Cate Blanchett's role as the younger Hepburn in The Aviator and said that she hoped to take the play to London. But she reiterated, "I need to slow down a little bit...acting is wonderful – God knows it's been sublime. But I heretofore would like to be driven by love." She said that she had written poetry for some time and would like to become a better poet.

The full transcript is at Totally Kate!

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