Mulgrew: Loving New York, Musing on Janeway

Kate Mulgrew (Janeway) spoke extensively to her fans via her official web site in an interview in which she answered their questions and discussed her new theatrical project. Iphigenia 2.0.

"I love being in New York...it’s what I’ve always loved best," Mulgrew said of her return to the theatre at Totally Kate. "I'm playing Clytemnestra in what is loosely based on the Euripidean tragedy...it's very topical and timely. [The director has] related it to the Iraq war, and to Bush and all of the rest of it. So I think that it's very smart, and very hard." She also noted that while roles have diminshed as she had grown older because so many parts are written for younger actresses, in New York the competition is "a small and highly talented and highly competitive group of women. So there’s a kind of a joy to it as well."

The character of Clytemnestra is devastated in the play by the loss of a child, and Mulgrew said that if she could have written backstory for Captain Janeway, "I wonder if I would have given Janeway a child...whom she had left behind. With the promise that she would be back very quickly." The actress thought that would have "informed every relationship" that Janeway had on the series: "The stakes would have been unbearably high, and it would have been the big secret...it would have been very poignant to have replayed that again and again over those seven years," possibly making Janeway more reckless in her impulse to get them home.

As to whether she finds herself relatively anonymous in New York, "I have it and I don’t have it. There are days when I get a lot of - you know - stuff...a lot! 'Hey, Captain!'" However, she feels that "everybody's in it together in New York...I feel [that] very much, when I get on the subway in the morning to go to work."

Asked whether she ever took a character home with her, Mulgrew said, "When I did Tea at Five...that was a pretty complete immersion, and I was all alone." She found herself identifying with Katharine Hepburn, but "I would say that that's probably strictly applicable to one person shows. When you’re on stage with other people you let go of it. Or you should when you leave."

As she has aged, Mulgrew added, she has had to work harder on her discipline, "a lot of really looking after myself physically. A lot of forcing myself to go to bed. A lot of saying no," and her family finds that she changes when she is working: "And my family’s full of life, so I have to cut out all that fun stuff. You can do a little bit, but you can’t do much."

For much more, including Mulgrew's best-loved foods, her legacy to her children, her friendship with the daughter of Robert Duncan McNeill (Paris) and her leanings for the 2008 presidential election, the full interview is at Totally Kate.

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