Visitor: Romance With Siddig Inevitable
2 min readAlthough Nana Visitor had no intention of falling in love with Alexander Siddig, when it happened she realized it was meant to be.
When Visitor met Siddig, she was married with a baby (her son Buster). “[The relationship] was actually a shock,” she said. “You can’t forget that I was married, with a baby, when I met him, and he was twenty-four years old. So I kind of always saw him as a very young man and off limits. There was no question.”
In fact, initially Siddig’s girlfriends saw Visitor as someone to whom they could come for advice on their relationships with him. “His girlfriends would come to me for advice. ‘How do I do this?’ I just didn’t see him that way. The romance was very surprising, but then there was this feeling of inevitability that I’ve only had a few times in my life, like, ‘Yes, this is my road. This is what’s meant to be. This child is meant to be.'”
Even though the relationship didn’t last, Visitor “Still feel[‘s] that. I still absolutely feel that way.”
Visitor also shared her opinions on playing Kira Nerys. One thing she disagreed with at first but came to realize was right was making Kira Nerys a less harsh character. “There were a lot of fascinating turns for the character,” said Visitor. “And there were times, as an actor, where I didn’t agree with them. But it was my job to play the role, and I did. One thing that I did have to go with, and they were right, but at the time I didn’t want to let go of where I was heading with the character, was the softening of Major Kira. I loved that she was a major character and not necessarily so likable. On television, you’ve got to walk a thin line of being a hero and having faults. They were absolutely right about that.”
Another thing Visitor didn’t like was a change in her uniform, when she ended up in a tighter uniform with high heels. “And the other thing was the feminizing of her that we did. I wasn’t crazy about that, either,” she said. “In year two, suddenly the outfit got tighter and heels came out. I know that Ira Steven Behr always says that was me. They talked about the fact that I walked like John Wayne. I said, ‘Well, it’s my outfit. That’s how I feel in that outfit.’ So, yes, I was responsible for the change in the costume, but it wasn’t really one that I wanted. It was one that I thought would get us where they wanted me to go.”
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