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| Interview with the Borg Queen by Mark Walters, HOT FISH 2001 I recently attended the Trek Expo in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While there I met many Sci-Fi stars and even a few childhood heroes. I spent quite a bit of time talking to Alice Krige, who has become best know for her portrayal of the Borg Queen in STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT. She's a lovely woman who truly appreciates her fans. I was fascinated by her from the moment we met. Alice was kind enough to allow an interview, during which I learned some very interesting things about her intriguing career. Hope you all enjoy. Mark: Alice thank you for being with us today. Alice: Oh it's a great pleasure to be here. Mark: Basically what we're going to talk about today is your experiences in STAR TREK, you experiences in science fiction films, and your experiences in horror films. It seems like you've had an incredibly wide body of work over the years. You've done everything from sci-fi and horror to very serious dramas. What is like to be a part of so many different genres of film, and what is your favorite genre to work in? Alice: Do you know I don't actually have a favorite genre. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have worked as you say across so many genres. Horror, science fiction, drama, fantasy. I guess those kind of blend. But there's another area in which I've been very fortunate. I've also worked across the spectrum of budgets. For example I was making STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT which at that time had a very large budget. I guess it was about $70 million, which is a lot of money. And of course a huge amount of that was spent on the special effects, and it was a studio picture, so the overheads are higher. But what was very fascinating to me was that I was working with technicians and people who were on the crew, and Industrial Light and Magic, hair and makeup, costume, who were about as accomplished technically as you can get. I mean they were top of the league in the film industry, in their field, and it was wildly exciting to work with such accomplished and incredibly talented people, and also to have at your fingertips the latest in technology. We finished STAR TREK on the 2nd of July. On the 7th of July, after the weekend, I flew up to Winnipeg to work for someone whom I had not yet met, but who is a dearly beloved friend of a pair of identical twins called the Brothers Quay, who were American but went to live in Europe and work in the surrealist realm of filmmaking. They treat film as poetry as opposed to film as kind of literal consecutive storytelling. The person I was going to work with in Winnipeg was named Guy Madden. He's a Canadian, lives in Winnipeg, and was born and raised there. That's where he makes his films, and he too is a surrealist of a quite different nature to the Brothers Quay. Nevertheless I went to work on this picture. The budget was well under $1 million Canadian. Everyone was working purely out of a passion for this man's vision. The film was so "poor", financially that is, that we couldn't record true sound. We just worked with a guide track and we had to go and re-voice the whole picture in a sound studio three months later. We were working in an unused part of a soap factory. They were making soap around the corner, and they had one big empty section, and in this great empty cavernous space Guy created a universe that was so astonishing and so unusual that it still takes my breath away. The picture is called TWILIGHT OF THE ICE NYMPHS. It's filmed as poetry. It's a very simple little storyline, but it's interest in fascination and it's ability to take you away is contained in the way he puts the images together. Throughout my working life I've been given that kind of juxtaposition and opportunity of working in mainstream television, and then going away and doing a play at a theater like the Alameda in London, which is a theater that brings wonderful actors and extraordinary scripts together for a three month commitment. Everyone gets paid the minimum, but you get the opportunity of doing something wonderful that you wouldn't ordinarily get to do. That has happened to me again and again, so I'm immensely grateful for that kind of range. Mark: As an actress, at least in all of the films I've seen you in, it seems you have a very commanding presence. I guess many people refer to it as stage presence or screen presence. In STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT, working under all that makeup, was it difficult for you to find the place that you wanted to be in at that moment? What kind of effect did that have on you as an actress being in that situation, saying those lines, and yet under all of that? Alice: In fact the makeup was an extraordinary blessing. The makeup was essentially created by a remarkable artist named Scott Wheeler, with obviously a lot of input from Rick Berman, Jonathan Frakes and Mike Westmore. But essentially it was created by Scott Wheeler. The suit was created, with input by the designer and everyone again, but Todd Masters actually created the maquette or little statue and then they built the suit. It was a gift from them in many ways because when they worked with me, I had no idea I was going to be wearing prosthetics when I got the scenes, it simply said when they described her that she was bald. I thought "Cool, I can work with bald." It also said that she had a haunting kind of beauty. I didn't know that I was going to be wearing prosthetics. I had been given the role, and I had gone up to Vancouver to work on something else. I got a phone call that they needed me at the Paramount lot to do a body cast and have a head cast made, and I thought "Why?", and after I got there to do it they said I could go and see the prosthetics. My heart sank. I had once before worked under inches of latex, and it was extremely difficult and not at all enjoyable. I went up there and Todd had sculpted the head, and I was struck by how powerful the look was. There was one thing I asked them to change. The makeup of the head, the look, consisted of a head with all the pipes and tubes stuck on, and then there was a forehead piece that was stuck on just in the crease of my lids and went over part of the head so it created a seamless join. Then there were two cheek pieces that went back behind my ears and down my neck. Into the forehead piece Todd had sculpted some sort of Cruella DeVille type eyebrows, and I said I think it's beautiful but I do beg you to remove the eyebrows because it will tie her into an expression, and I don't want her to be tied down. And he said "Okay, what I will do is make one without the eyebrows and one with the eyebrows, and we can try it out." To my great relief, when we put on the whole thing, he agreed that it was better to leave my face clear. So in fact I wore very little prosthetics on my actual face, which was fantastic because it meant I had access to my face and so did the audience. I had a lot of spray paint on my face but that was fine because it didn't affect my mobility. Actually by the time the six hours of putting it on… or eight hours? I can't remember, I think it took seven to put on and two to take off. Yeah, by the time the head was on and the lenses were in, I felt like the Borg Queen. I felt as if I had passed through the looking glass and come out in a different place. And the same applied to the suit. The first suit that they made did something that is very unusual for hard rubber. It shrank. So it was too tight for me, which meant that I was constantly moving against the tension of a too-tight rubber suit. Out of that developed a certain kind of walk, which was one of the triggers for the character. The look, once I had my lenses in, was another trigger for her to start growing by herself. At the end of the first day of work, they realized that the suit was unwearable, because my hands swelled up so that you couldn't see my knuckles. My feet were so swollen that they took me out of the suit to go to the bathroom and they couldn't put me back in. They realized I needed a new suit, so bless him Todd, we finished work that first day at like 2:00 in the morning on a Saturday, and he drove across L.A. to Chatsworth where his lab was. And they made a new suit which was this soft rubber suit that was like I was wrapped in marshmallow for the rest of the shoot. But I had already been given that walk. So yes it was uncomfortable, and I couldn't go to the bathroom, and it was very exhausting. But it was actually so useful, in discovering her and getting to feel like her, that it was not a problem. It was a gift in fact. Mark: You've worked with so many different actors, and so many fantastic actors. You're a fantastic actress yourself. Of all the actors and all the actresses that you've worked with, are there any favorites? If so why? What are some of your personal favorite films that you hold dear to your heart? Alice: I don't as such have favorite actors, because you learn something from everyone that you work with, but there are people from whom I've learned a great deal. One of those is an English actor who might not be known to Americans. He is Sir Derek Jacobi. He was in a series that people might remember him from called I, CLAUDIUS that would have been seen here. He was in GLADIATOR in fact. He is an incredibly accomplished classical actor. He has a capacity for investing every word with meaning, and yet not getting bogged down in meaning. That's a particularly difficult thing to accomplish with Shakespeare. There is an extraordinary discipline inherent in the verse, and yet if you can relax into that discipline it's like a springboard or a set of wings that take you flying, but it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to accomplish. I myself have never accomplished it. I've not spent enough time within that discipline. I was with the Royal Shakespeare Company for three and a half years, and had the great fortune of working with Derek on two productions. He was playing Prospero in THE TEMPEST and I was Miranda. I will never forget that it opens with a shipwreck, and watching that shipwreck is Miranda, and she's distraught. That's the first scene. The next scene is Miranda rushing down to the seashore, weeping with distress at seeing human beings die. Her father Prospero comes down and starts to talk to her, and he calms her down, and she falls asleep. Then there's a beautiful scene with the fairy Arial, or call him what you will, an etheric being. Every night I would lie and listen to Derek play his way through the scene. There was never a day, and he had long speeches, where the speech was the same as the night before. Everyday his understanding had taken a leap forward. Everyday I listened to it, I understood something new. That is an extraordinary gift. There was another kind of striking incident from the period of working with him. When I got there, for Miranda, I was still laboring under what I think is a grave delusion of thinking you couldn't learn the words until you knew what they meant. A kind of thought that came from acting school. So I got there and I didn't know my lines. Derek however was word-perfect on the first day. He knew everything. He spent the first two weeks waiting for me to start working with him. I had my head buried in the book. Derek's eyes were yearning for me to make contact. I thought to myself "I will never make that mistake again! I will know my lines and I will discover their meaning in the exchange between us." I was very fortunate, subsequently in the season to play Roxanne to his Cyrano. And I got there and I knew my lines, only to discover that Derek had read not only every English translation but the French as well. He knew every translation. He was so well prepared, which was an extraordinary lesson for a young actor, which I was. So that's Derek. You learn just from watching wonderful actors. I was just in London, and I was with my parents who wanted to go see a musical. We went to see MY FAIR LADY. A really extraordinary actor played Henry Higgins, and I was so moved by his performance, because again there was not a moment on stage that was not invested with a truthfulness and a meaning. Yet it was effortless. It was just like he was the person. The was no film between him and the portrayal. Consequently there was no film between us and the experience of that character. I've just been fortunate to have that kind of experience not only with the actors but with many of the directors that I've worked with. Mark: I've always felt that when it comes to screen villains or even theater villains, that the best villains are the ones that are smart and brilliant in their own right. You have had the opportunity to play villains a few times in movies, whether it be sci-fi or horror. You've done films like GHOST STORY, SLEEPWALKERS, and STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT. When you get offered a villain role, as an actress do you think that it's more fun because you get to explore more with a role like that? It seems to me that playing a villain is much more of a complex role than playing a hero, because the hero is essentially just trying to figure out a way to stop the villain. So how do you feel about playing villains on screen or in theater? Alice: I guess you really do have a lot of fun! (Laughs) Playing villains that is. I suppose the reason is that you get to do something that you wouldn't really do in real life. I mean if I met the Borg Queen in real life, I think I'd just have a heart attack and die on the spot. She would scare me so. And in spite of what my husband says I am not typecast as the Borg Queen. I don't think I'm like that in real life. So you get to explore a part of human nature I guess. You get to go places you wouldn't want to go in real life, and that's very interesting and kind of exciting, and in some ways very liberating. I only think I've played as it were two villains, in SLEEPWALKERS and in STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT. In GHOST STORY I don't think she was a villain. She was someone who had been murdered, and her spirit came back to wreak vengeance. It's not really a true villain. But in both of the other cases, I never thought of either of the characters as villains. They had their own, from their point of view, totally valid place that they were coming from. As far as the Borg Queen was concerned, assimilating people was a blessing. She could offer them no greater privilege. Mark: She seeked perfection. Alice: Yes! Yes, yes, you know she's without conscience or morality. She was not a villainess from where she was coming from. Neither was the character in SLEEPWALKERS. She just was who she was, and she needed to keep her son alive, so that's where she was coming from. Also, good guys are very interesting if they're well written. If you try to find the well springs of humanity in a good guy, because we are all fallible, that's what makes a good guy interesting. The tragic hero in Greek drama always had a tragic flaw. That was what generated the tragedy. I have several times played real people, several of whom were still alive, or in one instance like in the movie CHARIOTS OF FIRE playing someone who had been alive. I met her son, and he very kindly gave me her scrapbooks of that period in time, and photographs of her and artifacts that had belonged to her. I kept them in a little box and I took them around with me. I returned them afterwards, but I had a great responsibility to him and his family to do her justice. At another time I played a woman who was still alive. I've twice played women who are still alive. They were both Holocaust stories. One was a Hungarian aristocrat, sort of a Italian/Hungarian, who was married to an Hungarian aristocrat. He was foreign minister in the regime that was running Hungary in 1945 when the Nazis finally invaded there. He was responsible partly for shipping Jews off to the concentration camps, and she found out about this, and started to feed information to a remarkable man named Raoul Wallenberg. She helped him to help Jews escape. NBC wanted to create a love story out of that, and I didn't believe that they had an affair. I felt that they were enormously drawn to each other, but she was pregnant with her husband's child and I really didn't believe that they had an affair, and I resisted NBC's trying to introduce that. They were obviously attracted to each other. She was deeply moved by what he was doing, yet they were both motivated by something much greater than their personal attraction. It was a very complex and an interesting dynamic to play, and I had a huge responsibility to this woman who maintained that there was no love story. That was very complex and very interesting. So good guys, if they're true to life, are actually as interesting as villains in a very different way. Another thing about villains in usually, unless it's totally meant to be a naturalistic genre, if it's something like horror or science fiction you have the wonderful opportunity to be larger than life. That is so much fun. It gives you a chance to kind of exercise muscles in your imagination in a way that you're not allowed to do when you're being naturalistic. You're being constrained by reality. That's why it's so much fun to play someone like the Borg Queen. Mark: This will be my last question. You have a couple of projects that are coming up. We'd love to hear about them, so what can you tell us? Alice: At the end of last year I made a couple of art house movies in Europe, and I don't know whether they’ll get distribution in America. One of them is a picture that was made out of Belgium, yet set in the south of France, and based on a Belgian novel. A very, very relevant piece of work called FALLING. It's about the rise of racism in Europe at the moment, which is profoundly disturbing. It arises out of this situation, among other things, the disintegration of the USSR. It means that there have been refugees flooding into Western Europe, and they're given refugee status, which means they're given a house and an income until they can establish themselves. It starts to generate a great deal of resentment from those countries who are on the lower end of the earning scale. It's quite a fragile and difficult situation, and this film is about that. So it's very timely and very interesting, and I hope it gets to America. I also hope it's good, since I haven't seen it yet. You know you put your heart out there, but it doesn't necessarily mean the film is going to work. I did a piece of television based on a series of children's books called DINOTOPIA. It's a sweet series of books, and this is a production which involves a huge amount of CGI, because it's five human characters and the rest are dinosaurs. I believe they're going to be very striking and realistic. There is so much computer graphic imaging involved in the post production that it's not going to be finished until the summer of 2002, so there's that to look out for. I just had a small role in a science fiction, sort of futuristic fairy tale almost, called REIGN OF FIRE about a dragon. He's a very wicked dragon that scorches the Earth, and it's about how he's slain by the good guys, played by Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey. So that will come out next year as well I guess. I'm also producing something, which is the toughest thing I've ever had to do, because it's a very difficult, interesting and challenging piece. I've got a whole kind of 90 degree learning curve happening. I just want to thank the STAR TREK family of fans, because without them STAR TREK wouldn't be what it is, and I wouldn't have the opportunity of meeting all the people that I've met in the last two years. Oh and thank you. Mark: Well thank you too. I also want to say on behalf of all the STAR TREK fans, it was great to see you come back and play the Borg Queen once again with the finale of VOYAGER. It was fantastic to see you do that again. Thank you very much for doing the interview. We look forward to seeing more of your work. Back |
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