As it would turn out, Bujold would quit the series within two days of beginning the shoot, and would in turn, give us Star Trek royalty Kate Mulgrew as legendary Captain Kathryn Janeway, renamed at Mulgrew's suggestion to the show's writers.
Geneviève Bujold on the
cover of ELLE 1966
Information on how things fell apart so fast remained scarce for years. In 1994 Rick Berman told TV Guide, “It was immediately obvious it was not a good fit.” He wouldn't say anything publicly again until 2006 sharing, “This was a woman who, in no way, was going to be able to deal with the rigors of episodic television.”
Voyager star, and one of the hosts of the podcast The Alpha Quadrant, Garrett Wang, addressed this during an episode of his podcast with guest Nana Visitor, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Nana commented that she heard Bujold had been fired from the show.
Garrett corrected her, explaining that she had quit, but encapsulated the two dizzying days on the set saying, “We would shoot and she'd just run off the set. She wouldn't even socialize, so I stopped her, I kinda blocked her path, I asked her, 'Hey, how's it going?' And she stopped, and she kinda gave me the once over, and she felt like, 'Hmm, I guess I can share with this guy.' And it was Genviève Bujold, the French-Canadian actress, so she looks at me and she says, 'I feel as if I cannot trust anyone.' I said, 'What do you mean by that?' She said, 'Well, I come in, and I want Janeway to be Captain first, woman second. I don't want hairstyle, I don't want a lot of makeup, but I come to work, and they give me hair, they do my makeup, and they lie to me.'
As a group of new actors on a project, it is easy to assume everyone was equally as nervous and apprehensive about meeting their new castmates. It seemed that for Bujold, she recognized immediately that this was not something she wanted to do.
Garrett continued, “So she quit the second day, and she realized that the shooting schedule would be crazy and she had two very young children at home, maybe ages three and five, and she thought, 'I'm never going to see these kids grow up. I'm not gonna be around. The shooting schedule is nutty, they didn't do the things they promised me in the beginning', and thank god she quit before we aired one episode, right?”
Garrett went on to discuss a rumor on the set that they may replace the captain with a man, and change one of the crew members to a woman to balance it out. Once they announced the arrival of Mulgrew to the part, these fears were mostly allayed, but Mulgrew worried that her failure in the position after them already losing Bujold, would put the casting back into the same position.
Speaking at a Denver ComiCon in 2017, Mulgrew told her audience, “Something in me rose up at the very thought that after Miss Bujold defected, that I would fail and then they would bring back another man. I thought, ‘No, no, no we can’t have this. We simply cannot, we must go forward.’ And so we did. And guess who had me to the White House after the end of the first season? A woman by the name of Hillary Clinton.”
Mulgrew went on to discuss the tension on the set because of the rough start they had had in the Captain's chair. Mulgrew shared, “She lasted one day! As a result of that strange dance for the first six months at least ten guys from administration (Paramount) stood on the lip of the stage arms crossed like this and just watched me. They just watched. It was sort of unbelievably unnerving. But I took it as the gauntlet that it was. And I said to myself, ‘You want to play that game? Then I am going to play it with you and we will see wins this. And it’s going to be me.’
Bujold from Anne of the Thousand Days, 1969
Robert Beltran, who portays First Officer Chakotay, told TrekMovie in 2017, “One of the reasons I wanted to be on Star Trek: Voyager was Geneviève Bujold. I always admired her as an actor. She is a wonderful actress. And I thought being first officer to her captain would be a lot of fun and challenging to do scenes together. So when she left I was disappointed and I didn’t know too much of Kate’s work, but once we started working together I realized she was a great choice and very very capable, very able to do a role like this. So as far as I was concerned, I was just kind of sorry it didn’t work out with Geneviève. But I quickly forgot about that when Kate came on because she could do it.
But I can’t speak for the other actors. The actors are the very last people’s whose feelings they consider when things like this go on. I think it was more of a traumatic event when Jennifer (Lien) left, than the whole Geneviève thing because we had had the opportunity to get close to Jennifer and we all liked her and she was a really good actress. Then you bring in Seven of Nine, you bring in Jeri Ryan, who is beautiful and wonderful person to work with and you forget. You just have to move on. It really doesn’t make a huge impact in the long run. It is just a small glitch as far as the actors are concerned. I think it is more of a headache for the front office because they are dealing with the firing and putting in a new character and who they are going to cast."
Geneviève Bujold is known to millions around the world as a fantastic actress and successful artist. But to the legions of Voyager fans who have been inspired by the show, we just can't see anyone but Mulgrew denying Harry's promotion for seven years.
You can watch a completed scene from Caretaker with Geneviève Bujold as Captain Nicole Janeway below. Let us know what you think in the comments.
WRITTEN AND EDITED BY Silek
