“It Opened Up Many, Many Doors” Find help us

To so many, Kate Mulgrew will always be a name synonymous with Star Trek: Voyager. The actress paved the way with her role as Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager as the franchise’s first female Captain — a title that will always be close to her heart. But for those who never got into the universe created by Gene Roddenberry, they had another shot at getting to know Mulgrew through her performance in the seven-season-running Netflix series, Orange Is the New Black. Stepping away from her starship and into a minimum security federal prison, Mulgrew donned a new uniform and joined a cast that included Taylor Schilling, Uzo Aduba and Laura Prepon. Her work as Galina Reznikov — known to her fellow inmates and the prison employees as Red — would earn her a slew of critical acclaim, including an Emmy nomination.

During a panel at FanExpo San Francisco, moderated by Collider’s Taylor Gates, Mulgrew answered a fan question and reflected on her time as the tough-as-nails head of the kitchen. “I understood I was not going to get any younger,” she said about when the opportunity for Orange Is the New Black rolled across her desk, adding that she was incredibly “interested in the character.” Grateful for the experience and the mark it left on her career, as well as revealing what it was like to work with the show’s creator, Jenji Kohan, Mulgrew continued:

“I mean, Jenji Kohan was tough. She said, ‘I want that hair down to the nubs, and I want magenta. And I want those fingernails long and magenta. And I want Norma (Annie Golden) to be shaving your legs first scene.’ So I said to myself, ‘I’m gonna go all the way on this one.’ And, indeed, it opened up many, many doors and windows that perhaps would not have opened for me. It’s tough to be the captain of a starship and then a prison cook. But the industry recognized me and applauded my guts.”

Red’s Tragic Ending in ‘Orange Is the New Black’

From her words at FanExpo San Francisco, it’s clear that the character of Red meant everything to Mulgrew, which is probably why she’s been pretty outspoken when it comes to how her storyline wrapped. Earlier this year, at FanExpo Boston, Mulgrew said:

“I dislike it. And I told Jenji I didn’t like it. No, I didn’t like it. Jenji knew that my mother died that way. I didn’t see it in Red . I have to be honest with you, I didn’t see it in her strength, her mettle, her courage, her sharpness, her acuity, her heart, her sensitivity, her strategic sense, I didn’t see it in her culinary gift. It wasn’t represented. Was she at any point represented as an eccentric personality? Not really. [Putting on a Russian accent] Of course, she was deeply eccentric, she was a rotten prisoner with red hair and chopping people’s heads off and doing stuff like that, trying to find the chicken. [Drops accent] But she herself was not.

So, I thought it was a little hurried … If you’re gonna go that way, then let me have a minute with the audience to play it, you know what I mean? I felt a little…disappointed, I suppose, but that’s fair, it’s alright. Acting is largely just working. You never get what you really want because you’re not the boss. Unless you’re, you know, George Clooney .”

You can stream Orange Is the New Black in its entirety now on Netflix.

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