Speaking at the ST: CHI convention in Chicago, Star Trek: Voyager star Jeri Ryan has expressed regret for how her character was handled. Star Trek has a strangely mixed history when it comes to handling its female characters, and Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine is a case in point. One of the most popular characters in Voyager, she was nonetheless treated as eye candy; Seven of Nine was dressed in a tight catsuit that was utterly impractical. It took about 20 minutes to get into, and at first, production would grind to a halt whenever Ryan needed the restroom.
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Jeri Ryan attended the ST: CHI convention in Chicago over the weekend, and discussed Seven of Nine’s troubled debut (via TrekMovie). Kate Mulgrew, who had fought against the sezualizing of Captain Janeway, was incensed by Seven of Nine’s debut and something of a feud developed between the actresses (for which Mulgrew has since taken full responsibility). Ryan is now very understanding indeed:
“I think it probably was not handled well. I’ve had a lot of discussions—I had a long discussion with Kate [Mulgrew], actually, on the cruise, the COVID cruise [Star Trek: The Cruise IV, in 2020] We talked for like three hours. It was lovely. It was really, really nice. But hearing it from the way she experienced it and the way things were handled from the producer side of it and the network side of it and the studio side of it, it wasn’t handled nicely. I don’t think it was handled well. Yeah, I think it could have been—it should have been a very different situation all around, for all parties, I think. And it would have been very different experience, because it wasn’t a fun experience at all.”
Ryan understood what Voyager‘s producers were hoping to achieve with Seven of Nine. “I was involved in all the costume fittings, all of the discussions,” she recalls. “I knew what this was. And I was okay with the costume. I knew it was sexy. I knew what they were going for. I was okay with that because the way the character was written. And bear in mind, this was the ‘90s, guys.”
But Ryan knew that Seven of Nine was not the catsuit, and that there’s a sense in which the catsuit was the antithesis of the character. It was the character Ryan was interested in, especially after the audition. One scene, the “you wish to copulate” scene with Harry Kim, would eventually be used on-screen; the other was much more interesting:
“The other scene, which, of course, was never shot, was one of the most beautifully written scenes that I have ever seen before or since for any audition. And it was a scene between Seven and Chakotay, of Seven having her first memory of laughter. And it was beautiful.
And based on that scene, I saw the potential for this character, maybe. And I was able to draw on my son, who was two and a half time at the time. And when he was a baby and heard himself laughing first the first time and surprised himself. And so I could see what this could really be, what the potential of this character was.”
Seven of Nine Has a Troubled Legacy
Looking back, Seven of Nine has a troubled and conflicted legacy. The feud between Mulgrew and Ryan still casts a shadow over Voyager all these years later, and Seven’s early sexualization is indeed somewhat over-the-top. Ryan was willing to go with it because of her interest in the character, but her views now are mixed. “Because of how she was written, and because it was so opposed to way the physical appearance of the character was, I was all right with it. Would I be today? No, I wouldn’t. But then, whatever.”
There were early missteps; the Harry Kim scene came about too quickly in Ryan’s view, too early on in Seven of Nine’s character journey. But Ryan worked closer with writer Brannon Braga, and she still praises his vision for Seven (the two became close, even becoming a couple for a time).
“Basically every word I uttered on Voyager was written or rewritten by Brannon Braga. This was very much his character. She was his vision. She was his baby. She really sort of came fully formed out of his brain and he never made a misstep, really, I think, with the way he developed her. It was beautifully written. So there was never a moment where I had to go, ‘Oh, I don’t think she would say that.’ Because he knew what her mind was. So I was very lucky with the way she was written.”
Ryan returned as Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Picard, appearing in all three seasons, but she found this difficult given this story was set so much later in the timeline, and Seven had changed over the years. “I was so used to that voice being so specific for so long,” she reflects. “And there were a few times where I was like, ‘Okay, I’m not entirely sure that this is…’ But they were very open to feedback and input with things like that.”
On the whole, though, it sounds like a much more pleasant experience than Star Trek: Voyager – which is certainly what the iconic actress deserved.
