With the next half-season of Star Trek: Prodigy about to premiere, Paramount+ invited journalists to interview some of the cast — including Kate Mulgrew — allowing a behind-the-microphone peek at the voiceover process.

Mulgrew reprises her role as Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager, who stars in Prodigy as Hologram Janeway aboard an experimental high-warp starship, the U.S.S. Protostar. Her character trains a group of disparate—and desperate—kids of various alien species, seeking escape from a tyrannical prison warden. They come to realize that the United Federation of Planets can offer them protection, all the while learning Starfleet protocols.

Mulgrew also plays the “real” Janeway as a Vice Admiral, now searching for the Protostar and its missing captain, Chakotay.

The actor was only allowed four minutes to discuss her craft, but throughout our talk she was a consummate professional, elegant in charm and class. We spoke via Zoom on October 8 at noon. Later that day, Mulgrew attended New York Comic Con 2022 at the Javits Center to promote the show.

Bob Miller: Is your acting technique the same behind the mic as it is in front of the camera?

Kate Mulgrew: Well, the technique is the same in so much as I’m endowing the same characters with the same life force that I would whether it be live action or animation. It’s different regarding the circumstances. I’m alone in a booth with headsets for the animation which is strangely enough, extremely freeing. I mean, it’s very liberating. I can go wherever I want in my imagination and it’s a very collaborative effort. I’ve got the Hageman Brothers on Zoom, and they’re allowing me to take chances that perhaps in live action I wouldn’t have the time or the inclination to take. I just have this great sense of fun when I go into the booth.

BM: Do they allow you the latitude of improvising your lines?

KM: Yes, when I feel that it’s appropriate. But I’m an actor of the word. I’m very, very conscious that the writers have been, you know, not only meticulous in their research, but that the writing is superb. I never like to step on those toes unless we are all in agreement that such a word or such a thing could be shifted and altered accordingly.

BM: Have you been recording as an ensemble?

KM: No. You know, we don’t do that anymore. I think COVID really put the kabash on all of that stuff. I never did a lot of ensemble recording. It’s almost always alone and I prefer it alone. I think that you get the work done in a more efficiently, more economically, and also more beautifully.

BM: Do you record from your own home studio, then?

KM: No. The quality of Star Trek: Prodigy is so great that I really want to go into a very good recording studio to do this. I want everything to be absolutely pitch perfect. And so far I’ve been accommodated all over the world.

BM: How has fan reaction been to Hologram Janeway?

KM: It’s been great. You know, it was overwhelming with Captain Janeway when I did Star Trek: Voyager, and I’m having the same feeling of frisson. It’s as if I’m touching an entirely new generation, which I am doing, and that they’re responding in kind and very little can be as satisfying as that, Bob.

BM: What have you learned as an actor doing voice work since you first began?

KM: That I’m very happy that I’m a disciplined actor. I don’t waste time in the booth and neither do they. I go in fully prepared and I’m also prepared to take a lot of chances. I’m also aware that the time has come to perhaps indulge this nuance or change that subtlety, or let’s take the character here or the character there. I’m on it. I’m a hundred percent on it.

BM: You said that the process of being a voice actor, it frees you up, but how do you perform a character with just your voice alone?

KM: Well, you know what they say about the human voice, don’t you? The voice is the magic of the world. That was the primitive way of first understanding the creative process. It’s the depths and power of the human voice, to be able to take it high, to be able to take it low, to give it power, to give it vulnerability. I mean, absolutely endless possibilities and it’s wonderful to be able to do that.

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Now at the midpoint of the first season, Star Trek: Prodigy’s next batch of ten episodes begins streaming on Paramount+ on Thursday, October 27. Season Two is currently in production.

Star Trek: Prodigy comes from CBS’ Eye Animation Productions, CBS Studios’ new animation arm; Nickelodeon Animation, led by President of Animation Ramsey Naito; Secret Hideout; and Roddenberry Entertainment. Alex Kurtzman, Heather Kadin, Aaron Baiers, Katie Krentz, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth serve as executive producers, alongside co-showrunners Kevin and Dan Hageman. Ben Hibon directs, co-executive produces and serves as the creative lead of the all-new CG-animated series. Aaron Waltke and Patrick Krebs also serve as co-executive producers.

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Special thanks to Leigh Wolfson, Manager, Communications, Paramount+ and MacRae Martinez, Production Coordinator at PremiereTV.