THE ENSEMBLE CAST :
CAST REFLECTIONS
This is my transcription of the interviews on ST DVD. I have done minor editing to help the flow, as an oral interview is more "forgiving" than written transcription. Although the interviews included footage from the episode, here is my choice of episode screenshots.
| You get a shot, maybe two or three times in a lifetime, at some thing that you know can be a very happy marriage - an actor's role - in fortuitous circumstances. And this is where I am. I'll be forty next year. I've really lived a rich, interesting life. And I want to relax enough to really take the bull by the horns ... make this character my own. I want this work to be good, and I want it to be multilayered, and complicated, conflictive, dangerous ... I want to pick it up and take it places it hasn't been before. When I was a younger actress it was more ... full steam ahead ... I was driven and all that. Now, this feels right. It just feels great." |  Interview picture from ST DVD but interview excerpt from Poe whose interview date is in or before 1998. (1998 is the term. ad quem date because that is Poe's publication year.) |
For more Kate Mulgrew interviews, see KATE MULGREW INDEX.
| Well, I knew that I was part of something much bigger than I could ever have anticipated when I was receiving fan mail before the show ever started. And you're receiving this kind of welcome wagon. They're welcoming us into their universe. I knew this was something quite different. But it just said to me that this is something much bigger than anything I could have anticipated and something that will go on even beyond this show. |  |
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| I hadn't done any work at all. The pilot - we were just beginning to shoot the pilot. I reported for work the first day and there were, like, two boxes of fan mail. People writing saying, "Welcome to the Star Trek family." And: "Welcome. We're really looking forward to the [Star Trek Voyager]." I was amazed that there was that much anticipation for the show. I knew right away that this fandom around Star Trek was pretty unique, to say the least. |  |
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| Because it was new, because it was something in that it was a regular gig, and that we were on the road to building this character, the fan base, the difference in how people looked at you, and how they regarded you, because even though I worked ten or fifteen years before this on doing television and film projects you might get recognised every once in a while; it was pretty vague and nondescript, but as soon as this thing started, within a month or two of the Press, it was an enormous change in the focus for people, others, you know, outside of the show watching, and fans, and whatever, as to who you were and what was going on - your whole life, your personal identity takes a back seat, and now you become this alien character and they call you by name, so that was a revelation for the first year. |  See BEHIND-THE-SCENES: TIM RUSS for his other Star Trek roles, playing Tuvok, his favourite [Star Trek Voyager] episodes. |
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| I had no idea what it was like. It was a series. I've auditioned for many series. A few I've gotten, most I haven't. When I got in I was - hoop-la, Star Trek, this and that; I went to a convention because they invited me, and these people were treating me like this big cheese, but you know, I'm proud to be part of the show. I think it's a real good show. I think they tried to do the right thing every week, and, I know it's become a truism, it's about hope. |  |
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| It's a joy to pretend to be this extraordinary creature, so open and everything so new, no sort of cynicism or precociousness or pretentiousness or sarcasm, none of the usual young female. It's good, it's very good. |  |
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| When I first got this role, I started watching tape after tape after tape of [TNG] and [DS9]. And one of the nice things is I've become a fan. I mean, I was doing it first just for research so that I would prepare myself for this world I was about to inhabit; I ended up really getting into the show and enjoying watching. |  |
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| In the very beginning, we walked on these sets, and the sets are so big and the show is so big that you're just kind of overwhelmed by this spaceship and all these things; you know, it just feels very alien. But I think one thing's that's obviously changed is (we don't even think about it now) like wearing a spacesuit and walking across the lot or something. You know, back in the early days, like every time someone had a weird alien make-up on and we'd be like, "Oh that's so cool," and now we don't even blink, you know. Somebody comes in with, like, three heads, and we just go, "Hey, good morning," you know: "there's coffee ready." |  |
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| When you first walk on the bridge and see the bridge for the first time with all the lights and doo-hickies that are on, you kind of get a little chill down your back, you know, and for me I've always been a science fiction fan, and as a child I used to always play space ship, you know, and now here I am in pretty much the real deal. |  |
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| Armin Shimerman plays Quark, a major character in [DS9] and who appears briefly in [Star Trek Voyager].
I was very honoured by having that appearance on [Star Trek Voyager] because, in retrospect, it was Patrick Stewart (who plays Captain Jean-Luc Picard in [TNG]) who had played the same role for us in [DS9]. He had, in a sense, taken the baton of [TNG] and handed it to Sisko in our pilot episode of [DS9]. In that same venue, I did the same thing: took the baton of [DS9] and handed it on to [Star Trek Voyager]. |
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Thanks to Eos Development for the border background from the set Get Gold.
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