Her work and her children: "Therein lies the difference between a female captain and a male captain. My longing to raise my sons with some integrity, not to mention warmth and presence, is great."
Rumours that things are "frosty" between Jeri Ryan and her: "I'd like to just say once and for all that it's all a bit of shallow nonsense, all that about Jeri Ryan and me. She's a young and very beautiful woman. I'm 43 years old. Certainly it's hard to say goodbye to one's youth and one's beauty but it's harder to be shallow and without any realization of the dignity and loveliness of the other person and I do have that for Jeri."
By Mike McDaniel
New York Times News Service
January 16, 1999
PASADENA, Calif. -- Like her character, Capt. Kathryn Janeway, Kate Mulgrew wants to go home.
For Janeway, captain of the Starship USS Voyager on the UPN series "Star
Trek: Voyager," home is planet Earth. For 4 1/2
years, Janeway and her crew have roamed the Delta Quadrant in search
of a wormhole or some other route home.
For Mulgrew, single mother of two, home is freedom from 80-hour workweeks
and shoots that can go on until 3 a.m. It's
obtaining some sort of sensible life with her teenage sons. Ian, 14,
and Alexander, 13, resent that their mother is never around.
"They need a mother, and they got a celebrity," Mulgrew told an intimate
gathering of TV reporters in a brief but unusually
candid chat here. "They need milk and cookies, and they got a housekeeper.
There's just no question they'd like me to walk out and never look back.
"But I had no choice. First of all, I needed this job. My career was not going well. I wanted it. I was determined to do well by it and with it. And they, too, initially, loved it. But to have their mother summarily lifted from the house as if by a spaceship. . . ."
One way Ian expresses his displeasure is by not watching the show. Alexander will only watch now and then.
"This business of being in the vanguard of the woman in the '90s is
very interesting," she said. "I will write about this. . . . I want
a few months, even if they're not in the house, to be able to cook
them dinner and have them just walk in the room and know
that I'm there. "And I want this man that I'm in love with. And I'm
going to have him." The man, Tom Hagen, lives in Cleveland
and has children of his own, two girls, 11 and 9. Mulgrew, whose marriage
to Robert Egan ended 5 1/2 years ago, said she
hopes to marry this summer, maybe in June, "but it's crucial that the
four kids approve. It's a delicate situation."
Mulgrew's presence here, as part of UPN's winter session with the TV press, was necessarily brief -- she was due back on the Paramount set for more "Voyager" work. Despite her protests, Mulgrew is committed to "Voyager" for another season after this one, and "probably" will do one more after that.
"I've been dedicated to Janeway from the get-go," she said, "but I didn't think I'd love her this much. I love this character."
Upcoming is a two-parter, shot mostly in black and white, in which Janeway is swept back to the 1930s and deals directly with Lt. Tom Paris' "holonovel" character, the evil Dr. Chaotica. She'll play the novel's powerful Queen Arachnea.
"I love Janeway, but she's the height of restraint and dignity," she
said. "In this, I'm a complete vamp. The whole thing is so
extravagant, so outre and so funny. I was amazed they allowed me to
play it. It's a delicious departure for me because I don't
usually get to play parts like that. And it was so needed."
Although no end to the series is in sight, she can envision "one season
devoted to (the Voyager crew) reaching home and the
provocative things that develop."
During the semiannual promotional blitz known as the critics' press tour, the networks parade their on-camera and creative talent for interviews with nation's TV writers.
As commander of the starship Voyager, Capt. Kathryn Janeway is a cool
customer under the most chaotic
and perilous conditions. However, there is a force in the universe
far more intimidating than out-of-control
asteroids and hostile alien species -- brutal Hollywood hardball.
Kate Mulgrew, who plays Capt. Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, came to
the midseason press tour on a
mission. She hadn't tipped her hand to anyone: not to Paramount, which
produces the show; UPN, which airs it on Wednesday nights; not even her
closest friends on the set.
She wanted out, and decided to use critics to convey her message. First, however, she issued a disclaimer, to make it clear that her actions were not comparable to David Caruso's. "I don't want to see words like petulant or upset in your stories. I feel so privileged and happy to have been a part of this show."
She loves everything about Star Trek: Voyager, she said. Well, almost everything. "I love my character and this company, the cast, the crew. After five years, there's not a bad apple in the bunch." Then she added a qualifier. "Well ... Jeri Ryan who plays Seven of Nine} is new, so I'd put her aside."
(Perhaps catty gossip has a basis in fact. Rumor has it Mulgrew resents the attention the gorgeous Ryan has gotten, especially theories that Ryan has been the salvation of a series that was losing thrust.)
Mulgrew's problem is, she has found someone she loves more than the show. A Cleveland politician she has been seeing for five years, Tim Hagan, has asked her to marry him, and she has said yes. He can't move, so she wants to. "I am not going to miss out on this man," she said emphatically.
To relocate, she must escape her Voyager contract, which has another
season to run. At her press
conference, she expressed the hope that she would be cut some slack
for five years of loyal service. "I've given them 150 percent and I expect
they will be gracious."
Wrong!
UPN officials sought for comment were evasive, although network CEO
Dean Valentine was sarcastically
dismissive. "Really? She said that? Well, we'll miss her," he said
in an I-couldn't-care-less tone. Then he
twisted the knife: "I guess this means a promotion for Jeri Ryan."
Apparently Valentine's cavalier attitude was just for the press. His conversation with Paramount brass must have taken a different tack. The studio sprung into action at warp speed. Star Trek is a billion-dollar franchise for Paramount, and Voyager is the highest rated series on UPN, which is partially owned by the studio. Mulgrew was tugging on Superman's cape.
Critics who had interviewed her started getting backtracking calls in
their hotel rooms long after business
hours. A senior executive at Paramount, John Wentworth (personally,
not his secretary), came on the line and said, "Kate Mulgrew would like
to talk to you."
A clearly chastened Mulgrew then was handed the phone with the Paramount honcho standing by. "I shared my heart with you today," she began. "Let me clarify some things. I have no intention of leaving this show before its time. Although I'm contractually bound to a sixth season, the door is wide open to a seventh."
What about marriage and Cleveland? "There are creative solutions," she
said. One she had mentioned was
compacting her performances into a shorter work week. "Angela Lansbury
used to come in for Murder, She Wrote} Monday morning and be gone by 4
on Wednesday afternoon."
The irony of Mulgrew's situation is that, before this season, it appeared as if everyone on Voyager would be free to disembark. Ratings were slipping, and many presumed that this year would be the last. But the series has taken off again. "There must be some magic about Year Five," Mulgrew said. "The same thing happened with Next Generation," the first syndicated spinoff of the original show.
There are those who would say the magic didn't come from Five but Seven of Nine. However, few are brave enough to say that to Mulgrew.
"It makes me very sad to think about saying goodbye," Kate Mulgrew says.
But Star Trek: Voyager's Capt.
Janeway will jump ship when her contract expires in 2000. "The imposed
intimacy of these circumstances —
working together on a long-term television series — is just like a
family. You become deeply familiar with
everybody, and you develop a genuine love for them."
Strong as her feelings are for the Voyager (Wednesdays, 8 pm/ET, UPN)
cast and crew, Mulgrew has another
love: "I want to get back into the theater," she says. "I never left
it, but I want to pursue it with the kind of focus
and discipline that obviously has not been possible in this chapter
of my life."
It's also not possible in Los Angeles: "New York is where I first came
when I was very young to start my
eclectic career, and I have always missed it. It was appropriate for
a time to live in New York, but as you get
older you'll find that you have to be in the place that feeds you.
And for me, that's New York."
The actress visited her adopted hometown recently, to donate one of
her Voyager uniforms — "It's allegedly a
size 2," she laughs — to Planet Hollywood's memorabilia collection.
While a trunkful of Trek tchotchkes could
come in handy if she's looking to finance a New York apartment, Mulgrew
says she isn't much of a collector
herself. "I'll keep my pips," she says. "But the rest will go. You
shouldn't hold on to the past."
Here is an article form the National Enquirer
