"Get Out of My Kitchen!"

Kate Mulgrew began her career with what some thought could have very well been her biggest success as Mary Ryan on the ABC soap opera Ryan’s Hope. However, this brilliantly talented actress spent the next few decades continuing to one up herself with one amazing role after the other. Finally, when she took on the role of the first female Captain, Kathryn Janeway, on Star Trek: Voyager many believed that it would be a feat that even she couldn’t top.

We caught up with the 58 year-old actress recently at the 12th Annual Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas However, we began our enthusiastic inquiries by focusing on her latest role as Russian prison kitchen cook Galina “Red” Reznikov on the Netflix original TV series Orange Is The New Black and asked how it first came about.

“Well, I didn’t get the script,” Mulgrew recalls, “I only got the sides, which was probably clever of them though in hindsight, so I was not very well-informed when I went in for the audition. I feel I didn’t really need to be, she sort of jumped off the page and right into my imagination, right into my understanding, and I have been so happy. These kinds of parts, as you’ve just said, don’t come to an actress of my age at this stage unless you’re Meryl Streep.”

“It’s very unusual to encounter a character that you both love and need,” she adds, “It’s just perfect kismet. I’m loving every minute of it really. And who would have thought that such a match would be made? We don’t seem to be necessarily like one another and she resides within me somewhere, in a very vivid way, because there she was. It took nothing short of (goes into Red’s Russian accent) just reading it and understanding and doing it, you know?”

We voiced how skeptical we initially were about Mulgrew playing Red, but the moment she spoke, we got it right away and

"Get Out of My Kitchen!"

expressed how pleased we were that fans of hers and of Star Trek in general will now get to go along with the her on another wonderful journey… but in a very different way.

“I do, too,” she says, “This is the beauty of acting or maybe it’s the beauty of if you live long enough as an actress. It comes full circle and I think that’s why we do give our whole lives to the craft because I’ve had three to four of these roles in my lifetime.”

“I had Mary Ryan, Kate Columbo, Kathryn Janeway, and now Galina Reznikov, and you can’t beat it,” Kate continues, “The mystery of the whole thing, I suppose I can’t fathom the mystery of why it happens when it happens, but that it happens is just a joyful thing, and it’s exactly how I’m feeling.”

We commented that the finest moment of Red is when she comes around full-circle and the prison inmates she shuns are now shunning her.

“I’m being shunned,” she notes, “That’s what I did to Piper. Yes, it does come full circle. But you have to know that Jenji Cohen is a genius and it jumps off the page. Without the writing, you could be as brilliant as you’d like to be, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the writing that lifts it up, it sustains it, it’s fact that’s captured the imagination of the public because everybody loves it. She seems to understand that, of course, we’re inherently voyeuristic, but we’re also desperately in need of a connection.”

“We’re looking at these women and we’re saying yes,” Mulgrew adds, “But they’re incarcerated, but it’s a minimum security facility and we’re only inches away from these flaws and these mistakes and these screwups ourselves, so I think it adds to the kind of tension. She’s drawn a brilliant tension between the audience and the characters, and how about the actress she’s culled from the pool in New York. I

"Get Out of My Kitchen!"

mean, these are really good actresses.”

Orange Is The New Black stars Taylor Schilling as a lesbian convict serving time for carrying drug money for her girlfriend, who is one of her inmates, played by Laura Prepon. One particular standout is Natasha Lyonne, who plays a drug addict Nicky who becomes a daughter figure to Red.

“I’m not only a great friend, but a huge fan,” Kate says of Lyonne, “She’s fearless and she’s so smart. This, too, jumps off the screen. Her intelligence, her keen intelligence, her willingness to just go deep, where others kind of will try, Tash goes and it shows.”

We voiced how disturbed we were by the character Pornstache Mendez, a corrupt correctional officer who regularly sells drugs and sexually harasses the prison inmates, on a show from the star of one of the most intelligent TV franchises ever.

“And it would be too devastating to watch that violation, wouldn’t it?” Mulgrew says, “But you had to be not sure. This is a prison. His evil is incarnate, right? You can’t know at any moment what the CO is capable of doing, so then when it is what it is, it’s almost even worse, isn’t it?”

In the middle of our interview, we get a visit from none other than the iconic William Shatner himself, who played Captain James T. Kirk on the original 1960’s Star Trek TV series. Mulgrew says this of him.

“This is a great guy,” Kate enthuses, “And I would say this. This is true. Over the years, we’ve become great pals, doesn’t ever start like that because we’re captains, right?”

“Right?” Shatner replies, “The more I interviewed you, the closer we got. I was fulfilling the service of interviewing you and lauding you and you were giving me these wonderful eyes? No. The truth is I had an insight into you and this beautiful soul. She’s funny, she’s so bright and intelligent and talented beyond measure, so we’ve had a great time

"Get Out of My Kitchen!"

together over the years.”

In 2011, William Shatner directed a documentary The Captains in which he interviewed every captain of all of the different Star Trek series from Next Generation to Enterprise. We remarked about how open and honest the conversations in it were.

“It was beautiful,” William says.

“Well, he is, he really is honest,” Mulgrew says of him, “And you’re most brutally honest about yourself.”

“And you should see her on her personal documentary,” Shatner notes, “We were able to use some footage that’s remarkable. She’s a remarkable woman and it shows on her close up, Captain’s Close-Up.”

“He did a wonderful job, but this is an icon, as you know?” Kate says,

We noted to Shatner that having grown up as latch key kids with absentee fathers, we felt that characters like Captain Kirk were iconic male characters in many eyes.

“Well, that’s wonderful,” replies Shatner.

Shatner soon bid us adieu as he left with he and Kate planning to meet for dinner when the two of them meet up at the New York leg of the convention.

“He’s a good guy,” Kate says, as he left us.

Getting back to the interview at hand, we mentioned to Kate that the violation of Red by Pornstache was particularly intense.

“Too horrific, I know,” Mulgrew replies, “No, and when you say that to me now, of course, I read the script, so I knew I was safe, but I’m not altogether safe. Red is never safe. Despite her position of power, at any moment, the ground can be knocked from beneath me. I mean, they are in charge, and I think we’re probably going to explore that, and I’m going to have to go there.”

“Janeway was so on it and beyond sort of any of those things,” she adds, “But Red is vulnerable (starts speaking in Red’s Russian accent) and these things are going to happen, pretty sure they will. In one way or another, her deep sense of fragility, her always being

"Get Out of My Kitchen!"

on the edge will be explored and you find out Jenji in an unprecedented way.”

We noted that Red’s authority has so easily taken away from her. She can use it make her life somewhat better, she can abuse it, but it’s not really hers. Janeway’s authority on Voyager, by comparison, was always there. We also asked if she could warn us about any further surprises.

“Right,” Kate says, “I can’t warn you about anything, because I don’t know. If I were them, that’s where I would go, and I would say, ‘Yes.’ To explore every dimension is the way to invest in a character. We have to go with empathy, we have to love them, and we only love what we can need to protect and care for, so I think that’s where we’re going to go.”

One particular standout scene in Orange Is The New Black was the scene where Red learns that a drug addict named Trisha, played by Madeline Brewer dies.

“That was my fault,” she says, “I can’t take her back just because she says she’s clean and she’s not clean, but it’s too late. Yeah, these are the decisions that are made. I think you put it very well.”

“You think you’re in control, but you’re not,” Mulgrew says, “And that’s what prison is, isn’t it? That’s the whole point of it, it’s punitive. Self is gone, so it’s reclamation and ownership of self that becomes everything in prison, and the kitchen to her is the metaphor for self. With that, she can survive, but without it, I don’t know.”

We asked Mulgrew how the tragedies that Red goes through affect her as the person behind the character.

“Well, I’ll tell you, this is strictly between you and me, and the millions reading…” Kate says, “I can see already that I’m changing because when you love a character, like I love Red, you have to go there, so I go into her. And it’s not about

"Get Out of My Kitchen!"

Trisha, it’s just about a change in approach and almost in lifestyle, and things are getting very quiet. They have to, to necessitate or provide the kind of feeling that I need to be feeling when I’m playing her. I just want to be with her.”

We noted how so few people can identify with how deeply committed an actor has to be to a performance like that.

“I would beg to differ,” Mulgrew says, “I think good actors always know when they have the opportunity to go there and invariably, they do.”

We praised Mulgrew for her performance in the Broadway production of Equus and asked when she’ll do another stage play.

“Oh, how wonderful, that’s very nice,” Kate replies, “Well, you made my day with that one. Well, you just missed me. I just got off the stage. I did a play in the last couple of months and, of course, you will forever, it’s my first love, and undoubtedly will be my last.”