| Marty Bass introducing the pre-recorded segment
with Kate - You can tell the vibe of a person, by conversation, which is
the point of ‘Coffee With’, you’re going to find out a whole lot, and you’re
going to like Kate Mulgrew. Take it Jimmy...
Marty Bass: Morning Edition. How are you!? Don Scott: The official handshake! Kate Mulgrew: More to the point, yes… Ohhh… that’s a good one! Don Scott: Thank you! Marty Bass: What was mine? Kate Mulgrew: Lovely! (laughs) Let’s do it again!
Kate Mulgrew: Grab! Don Scott: Okay. Marty Bass: I am grabbing! Kate Mulgrew: You see, he’s got a ‘paw’! Don Scott: There you go. A paw?! Marty Bass: Hee hee hee. He does have a paw! Don Scott: I’ve got four paws, actually! Marty Bass: He has paws that are finely manicured works of God’s art… Kate Mulgrew: I love the handshake, don’t you? Don Scott: Yes.
Don Scott: Except in the middle of church. Kate Mulgrew: And I determine instantly the character of the person. Marty Bass: What’s my character? Kate Mulgrew: Wonderful. Warm. But you’re probably intellectual. Very physical. Don Scott: I’m an animal! (Grabbing Kate) Kate Mulgrew: Yes! (lots of laughter from Kate, interviewers and crew) And we’ll go to break now!
Kate Mulgrew: How many times have you been married? Marty Bass: So you say women go right for the … right for the… Kate Mulgrew: Of course, because what’s more interesting? No. Instead what did you spend the entire interview talking about?! His career as James Bond. Don Scott: Actually more about his coattails in Lake Geneva. Kate Mulgrew: No. Well. You see… women want to know. Who do you love? How long have you loved them? Was it worth loving them? Do you have any children? Have you ever suffered? What do you like to eat? Don Scott: How many times have you been married?
Marty Bass: Do you have any children? Don Scott: Who do you love? Kate Mulgrew: I do, I have three children. Marty Bass: What do you like to eat? Kate Mulgrew: Northern Italian, how about you? Marty Bass: Northern Italian.
Don Scott: Who do you love? Kate Mulgrew: I love my husband. I love my children. I love my siblings. I love my friends and they number few. Five, I’d say. Five very close, intimate friends. Don Scott: Cool. Kate Mulgrew: So I love deeply, intimately, fiercely and passionately, about 15 people. Marty Bass: Interesting. Kate Mulgrew: How about you? Don’t think. How many would you say you profoundly love? Marty Bass: I would say less than ten. Kate Mulgrew: Less than ten. Marty Bass: Five might be a close number. Don Scott: I need time to think. Kate Mulgrew: Yes. I think that’s fair, don’t you? Marty Bass: Yeah. Kate Mulgrew: Love is tough business. Who’s got the time? Who’s got the energy… and it’s scary. Marty Bass: Well there’s love and there’s like. Don Scott: That’s a good question. I never thought of that before. I’d say three, but I had a long time to think about it. Kate Mulgrew: Three. Don Scott: Yeah, maybe yeah… Kate Mulgrew: Your wife. Your children. Don Scott: That’s it. Kate Mulgrew: It comes down to this, and gentlemen, you made this up… who do you take a bullet for? About five people, right? Don Scott: Interesting. Kate Mulgrew: About five. Don Scott: I never thought of that. That’s an amazing thing.
Kate Mulgrew: Well how could it not be real? What would it be if it weren’t my voice?! Marty Bass: I don’t know… Don Scott: Put on… Marty Bass: But every once in a while you… Kate Mulgrew: …in a little box? Marty Bass: But you hear, you know you hear a voice on TV… watched you as Kate Columbo, my gosh, all the way up to Janeway and you’re doing the Hepburn thing now, which we’re going to get to, but you hear a voice, and then you hear it in person. Your voice is as distinctive as Kathleen Turner’s. And hers in person is like yours. It’s husky, it’s got body. Kate Mulgrew: (in a deep voice, imitating Kathleen Turner) Oh, she’s way down there… Don Scott: It’s… yes, it’s lower than mine. Kate Mulgrew: (still in Turner’s voice) Kathleen’s way down there. Don Scott: We’ve had an interview with her.
Marty Bass: No, you walked in you said (in a deep voice) Hello… Kate Mulgrew: Well it’s early in the morning! It brightens and lightens up as the day goes on. Don Scott: Do you change it for Katharine Hepburn. Kate Mulgrew: I do. In Act One she’s very young. She’s thirty-one. (In young Hepburn’s voice) So I have to go quite high there, you know. And she was very high. Are you aware of that?
Kate Mulgrew: Now whether she made this up or not, I’m not sure. But if you listen to her vocal quality, nobody talks like that. Nobody from Connecticut talks like that. It’s part Southern, part English, part Yankee, and it’s all that stuff. (In the older Hepburn’s voice) And then in Act Two I go very deep and very… Marty Bass: Did you ever meet her? Kate Mulgrew: Happy I didn’t, too. Don Scott: Why is that? Kate Mulgrew: I think she was so powerful that I would have been informed by her too much. This way I can bring the character to life. Marty Bass: Interesting. Kate Mulgrew: Via my own imagination.
Kate Mulgrew: No, you can’t just dance into it, if that’s what you’re asking. No, I had to go through a very difficult process to find her. I didn’t like her very much. Marty Bass: Really? Kate Mulgrew: No. How would you like somebody to whom you’ve been constantly compared, right? From the time I was fifteen… Don Scott: Okay… Marty Bass: Yes you have been. You read any … let me tell you this - I have to tell you this. Go on line, look up Kate stuff, you will see all these comparisons to Hepburn. You’re a hundred percent correct.
Don Scott: Really? Kate Mulgrew: Full of vulnerability. Don Scott: Self protective…
Don Scott: Really? Kate Mulgrew: She’s… That young girl never … died… Marty Bass: That’s a great… it’s interesting to hear an impression of someone who at this point has clearly studied, trying to get into the mind of a subject. Kate Mulgrew: Yes, I have. Marty Bass: It’s really fascinating. Don Scott: She had a reputation for being aloof. Most people who are aloof are really shy and afraid. Kate Mulgrew: I think she was desperately shy. You know she could never eat in a restaurant. Don Scott: Why? Kate Mulgrew: Without getting sick.
Kate Mulgrew: Serious. And a true story. She had a lot of strange phobias like that – I think you’re absolutely right. Intrinsically and inherently deeply shy. Marty Bass: I want to show the website real quick. (Shows the official “Tea at Five” website.) Because you are so close to one of the quickest six minutes we have ever done! I could talk to you forever! You even look like her! Hey listen, we have a souvenir for you. No former captain of the Enterprise… you know I had to throw that in… Kate Mulgrew: Voyager! Marty Bass: Oh, God…Voyager! Don Scott: Whoops! Kate Mulgrew: They always make the same slip, ladies and gentlemen, and it always breaks my heart! Marty Bass: But I watched the show! Kate Mulgrew: No you didn’t! Marty Bass: Yes I did! Kate Mulgrew: It’s Voyager! Marty Bass: At the end… Kate Mulgrew: What was my name?
Kate Mulgrew: What was my first name? Marty Bass: Uh… Captain. Kate Mulgrew: And when I hit that thing (motions to her chest, indicating a Communicator) what did I say? Marty Bass: Uhhhh…. Don Scott: Beam me up, Scotty! Kate Mulgrew: No, no… Marty Bass: Now you’ve got me flustered! Kate Mulgrew: Red Alert! Marty Bass: Now you’ve got me… Kate Mulgrew: Right, remember that one!? Don Scott: Oh, now that I hear you say it, sure!
Kate Mulgrew: Are you reading that? Marty Bass: You tell me I didn’t watch…Coffee with mug…you are a true delight! Kate Mulgrew: Thank you. What a beautiful… It’s been my pleasure. You are! Marty Bass: One of the nicest people that’s ever graced us… Kate Mulgrew: It’s been great, thank you! Marty Bass: 18th to the 23rd, the Hippodrome. “Tea at Five” – Mulgrew does Hepburn. We’ll be right back. |
Marty
Bass: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Kate Mulgrew to the Eye Witness
News!
Marty
Bass: How are you?
Kate
Mulgrew: I love the handshake!
Marty
Bass: Right after this, I guess! We were just sitting here talking
about the Roger Moore interview that we had earlier in the week and we
were telling Kate what we had asked Roger, and she goes, ‘the first question
I would have asked was…’
Kate
Mulgrew: Twice.
Don
Scott: Northern Italian, wow, that’s good!
Marty
Bass: You know, you’re awesome. I’m sitting here listening
to you – that voice is real! I even said that to you first thing
I said when you walked in the door. You have such a distinctive voice.
Kate
Mulgrew: I’m high, high, high, high. (laughing) Young, young,
young, young, young!
Don
Scott: Yes. In the first Spencer Tracy movie I remember she was.
Marty
Bass: But clearly you cannot do a show like this and not have had
the subject as somewhat of a role model or someone you looked to.
You just can’t walk in there and bring that to life. Or can you?
Kate
Mulgrew: And comparisons, as we all know, are odious. So I found
that dreary by the time I was twenty. I wanted to be an actress in my own
right, right? And then I started to think her politics were distasteful;
that she was strident and harsh and I… there were no soft edges; she was
all angles. It wasn’t until Matthew Lombardo, who’s sitting right
over there, wrote this play, and I got into the process, that I understood
something about Hepburn that I never would have suspected. She was
so full of sadness.
Kate
Mulgrew: And that’s what we love. That’s what attracts us to one
another. (In the young Hepburn’s voice) But when she’s talking like
that, she’s doing all that… Just watch her with John Wayne or somebody
like that, you’ll see. Or Bogart… (Hepburn voice)‘you liar’… right there,
you’ll see the tears.
Marty
Bass: Serious?
Marty
Bass: Janeway!
Marty
Bass: Listen, they’re ushering us off. And I have so many questions
I could ask you! Janeway infects the Borg Queen, technically changing
history, Janeway’s not dead!
