Mulgrew on Clytemnestra, Career Regrets and Tuvok

Kate Mulgrew (Janeway) attended the July Vulkon convention in Columbus, Ohio, her adopted state, where she talked about her recent theatre work and teased fellow guest Tim Russ (Tuvok), whom she called "the naughtiest man."

In a talk transcribed at Totally Kate!, Mulgrew said that the past twelve months had been "a fraught year", seeing the cancellation of her television show The Black Donnellys and two major theatre roles: Laura Keene in Our Leading Lady and Clytemnestra in Iphigenia 2.0, both in New York. "I took a little holiday, and I disappeared to the Bahamas with my family, which was very good. And then I ran off to Harstine Island, which is an isolated, austere and very beautiful island in the Puget Sound, where I've been threatening to go for twenty years," which was interrupted by the offer of the second role - an adaptation of the Greek drama, which Mulgrew jokingly called "this light-hearted comedy."

Mulgrew, who once played Tamora in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus at the New York Shakespeare Festival, laughed that Clytemnestra's family drama was "going to bring the house to its knees with belly laughs every night." As she explained, "It's the story of a family - Agamemnon, who rapes and steals Clytemnestra from her husband, and in order to do so, of course, beheads the husband and kills her only child. But evidently she sort of enjoys the rape, because they get married." Years later, when Agamemnon plans to sacrifice their daughter Iphigenia to appease the soldiers he is sending off to war, "I approach Achilles, who is sixteen years old...I press him to my bosom and assure him that if he marries my daughter and defends her I will owe him for the rest of my life." Though she said that she was "working with a madwoman", Mulgrew also felt that "I'm getting older, but something's getting younger at the same time and it's... my sense of reason, which I seem to be losing!"

Mulgrew had believed that Russ had left the arena already, but he asked the first question of the Q&A: "Is there chance that Tuvok and Captain Janeway could have got together you know...have a little Janeway and Tuvok?" Mulgrew professed not to recognize him with his clothes on and ordered him not to come near her, but then invited him onto the stage, where the pair said that they had not seen each other for a couple of years and Mulgrew berated Russ because she had heard that the men of Voyager have an annual dinner together without the ladies, though last time they had it at Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine)'s restaurant.

"You'll have to talk to the good Doctor about that because he's the one that arranged that! Picardo!" objected Russ, who added, "She charged us!" Mulgrew added that, like Ryan, they should all find chefs to marry, and the two discussed their children. When Russ left, she answered questions from the audience saying it was easier to play a Borg than a Klingon and said that she wouldn't mind appearing in a movie with the other Star Trek captains but although she would very much like to do a Voyager movie, she had not heard anything about the possibility of one at any point.

Mulgrew said that her biggest career regret was "bad television" which she only did for money, naming several theatrical roles as her favorites, including Hedda Gabler. She said that while she did not have a role model in previous years, "Now it would be Judi Dench. Did you see Notes on a Scandal?" And she laughed about playing the bad girl in the bad television adaptation of Daddy with "the young, and very, very good Ben Affleck" and "I had fun in my bed scenes with Patrick Duffy. He would deny it, but we had a lot of fun!"

The full transcript is In a talk transcribed at here.

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