Mary McDonnell Says Laura Roslin Would Be Devastated if She Were the Fifth Cylon
The fabulous Mary McDonnell, who plays President Laura Roslin on Battlestar Galactica, recently gave an in depth interview to two professors from Brown University about her role as Laura and the larger sociological contexts of the show. Mary always gives insightful interviews, but this one is especially interesting because she does not hold back her intellectual side since she is speaking to an academic audience.
The long conversation touched on everything from what it means to be human, the eternal challenge of conquering our fears, what it means to believe in a God, and what they think "All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again" really means. It is especially interested to hear Mary articulate how Battlestar is "a very male world in search of its femininity."
Mary also talked about how devastated Laura would be if she discovered she was the fifth Cylon, while also admitting that she would be very interested in trying to navigate that challenge as an actress:
"Totally [from] her point of view, what would be so bad about being a Cylon would be that it would completely shake the foundation of what Laura believes she is even alive for. In other words, she should have died a long time ago, according to the pilot. But, instead, everyone else died, and she became President. And Laura has held a belief in [the] job [she must do], and so the idea of being a Cylon would threaten that so unbelievably that she can’t let it in as an idea, because she doesn’t know how to proceed…or perceives that she wouldn’t know how to proceed."
Thank you to Battlestar Galactica’s Mark Verheiden for blogging about this interview.
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