Star Trek Ladies: Nana Visitor | Deep Space Nine, Part 2

Weirding Way Media Network Eighties and so Pretty through the City Gunman World eighty. Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies, where we look back at female driven television shows from the nineteen eighties, and in this special series we're calling Star Trek Ladies, we're looking at the women of Star Trek across all decades and across the universe. You are your hosts, Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert HadAM. Hello, I'm Sharon and I'm Susan, and we are in the middle of our two part interview with Nana Visitor, who starred as Kieran Nourice for seven seasons of Deep Space nine and revisited her DS nine role in the Star Trek animated series Lower Decks, as well as in several Star Trek video games. This is part two of a wonderful two part conversation we had with her.

So if you want to start from the beginning, please go back to our last episode with Nana. It's Season two, episode twenty three, or you can have your dessert before dinner and start right here. Either way, please join us. We're mid conversation with our special Star Trek and Eighties lady Nana visitor. Okay, we're back.

Before we leave the eighties, you talked a little bit about it. How have you seen television change from the eighties for now, for you, for women? Production wise? Well, in many ways I think that once it stopped being so so corporate. I mean, when it was three stations and syndication, it was suits in charge, absolutely, And with the breaking down of having so much availability, now really people are able to cater to what people want to see, not what we're told we're going to see.

We can find it out there. So people have more freedom to do what they do and to make it about women or this group or that group, or say just what they want to say. I see that changing a lot. I see more awareness in the culture from the eighties. We're still not there, but there are sets that certainly Discovery is one of these sets that I've heard about.

They have HR what actors can go to HR what that blows me away? Unheard of? So tell me what you've heard about the set of Discovery and the production of Discovery for listeners that may not be in where well, it's not the hierarchy as I certainly knew it, where there's a man in charge and he decides how much is going to trickle down in terms of opportunities for women or for people, whatever it is. You can have as many writers as you want, you can have as many actors as you want. Everybody going all the way up can really have that in their mind to push for this non biased way of looking at life.

But unless the guy at the top decides he's going to decide when to stop it, how much he's in control of that lever And what I'm seeing is that when it's a man, even today, First of all, there's a huge awareness to the point where I've talked to an executive producer who says, no, if the guy bringing coffee in has a good idea or goes you know what that idea that you're talking about that could be offensive to you know, they'll stop and listen. There is a stop and pay attention thing going on that in the eighties would have been laughable, laughable. Even five years ago it would have been laughable. Would not have happened. It's amazing.

Yeah, it is amazing, And I'm sure it's still like that in something's working on. It depends on the show. But they're just looking at discovery there are women executive producing, producing on sets behind the sets. They're not wor read about giving power. You know, there was always this thing of don't get power to the actors.

They'll get too powerful and they'll have a saying, ooh, that's bad. And that's changing. They're listening and you know, equity diversity training is having its effect, and just women being in the room changes the dynamic of how a meeting goes. Yeah, that's incredible. I had not heard anything about that.

That's really great to know. Yes, all right, So back to the nineties. Whoa, So we're back in the nineties. You're doing a bunch of nineties TV shows. You did a night writer?

Did you get ride in the car? And the night writer did not? But I was filmed near it, Okay, and he was lovely. I have to say. He was lovely, very kind, down to earth person.

All right. Who else did you love working with? Uh? I'll tell you who I didn't enjoy? Yes, that good.

That's good too. Andy Griffith. Really, I've heard that interesting. I heard that who he heard that from somebody. I heard that from somebody that he was kind of nice, not nice.

I heard that he was creeping on the ladies. Did he creep on you? He didn't creep on me. Uh, there was a weird dynamic between us and he would when I was doing the scene of turning into you know, I was because in one character you played two people two people, so like you were on it three times playing four people. I mean, that's pretty impressive, Mattlock.

True, And I don't know what his issue was with me, And I believe he was. Was he directing it, whether he was listed as directing it or not, he was directing it. But it was almost as if he was trying to trip me up in my acting, as if he was trying to help me fail, which is a very weird dynamic for him to have had with me. But it was not a great experience at all with him, which is crazy because they brought you back so clearly he was having a good time. Yeah, because he could have said no, but he was like, oh no, bring it back because I can mess with some more.

It was weird. It was very weird. Who knows can't be speaking a turn? It was here because he was. He was so great.

It was so great. He's very good on the show. Yes, yep, very good on all his shows and everything. Yes, yeah, but you want them to be good to like recent human beings. It's very least professional and act professionally.

That's yeah, that seems that seems to be the floor. But for me, but no fun? Who else was no fun? You know? But I don't blame him.

Now we're in the nineties. Now we're creeping into DS nine. It was such a hard show to guest on our show. It was Oh yeah, I would imagine. They have to deal with makeup, they have to deal with the hours, they have to deal with green screen, they have to deal with a tone and a way of speaking that we all got had some time with.

But they just have to you know, and lots of dialogue. It's not like little speeches. Brian Keith was very grumpy. He was not happy on our show. Now he's from Hardcastle McCormick, which Mark mccorick played by Daniel Kelly, who you worked with and Ryan, did you like Daniel Kelly?

He was great Hardcastle McCormick fan. But I am, yeah, he was. He didn't pay too much attention to me, you know. He he was a real guy's guy and I was young, so he was like but he was always kind and sweet, and Brian Keith must have been pretty old. He was he was old, and he was very but he was grumpy.

He was great, he did a good job, but he hated every minute of it. And it was him and me. So that was tough. Oh that's tough. Yeah.

I was going to say, if I recall correctly, the two of you were in a scene together or scenes together with just the two of you for about half the episode, because that was the main plot of the story. You were trying to get his character to leave I believe where he was living, and he didn't want to go right right, So he was being grumpy as a character. Yeah. Yeah, And maybe he was that kind of actor, you know, where you get in a mode and you stay there. But I don't think so.

I think he was really unhappy. He was happy. I don't think his health was that great. Even from Hardcastle McCormick on. There were times watching Hardcastle mcormick you're like, he does not feel good today, he does not want to climb it, and they I think he just finally said I'm not climbing in that car anymore.

So you can just figure it out, go catch him McCormick. I'll wait here on the sidewalk like a reasonable person. I mean, he was, he had to be in his seventies or eighties when he did Deep Space nine. I would think, so, okay, we're gonna get him. We'renna give him a little because Brian Keith give it to him because our hours were just he wouldn't have been used to that, and he like a star.

I'm not sure he was a Deep Space nine guy. No, yeah, I think a lot of agents just said, hey, this is the new Star Trek, so it'll be an annuity if you get on it, so just go and do it. And if you can get Brian Keith, you take Brian Keith. Yeah. Yeah, all right.

We're in the nineties. You get a call about this new Star Trek shows next you know, I was. I was at the height. I was expecting to get a series. I was on that trajectory.

I was auditioning like four different places a day. It was a lot, and I auditioned for La Law. Juny Lowry was the casting director on it. And I auditioned and I was just out the door and she chased me down. That's either really good or really bad.

This time it was really bad. So you're not getting this. But there's a show that you could be really right for. And she sent me the script and it was this star Trek and I called my manager and I said, this is a mistake. Major Kira is obviously a man.

She's angry with a captain and telling him he shouldn't be here and being aggressive. And this is the audition scene. So this doesn't seem to be right. No, they're looking for a woman. I was like, are you kidding me?

And I wanted it so badly. I wanted this job so badly, and then I got it. My manager said, career Killer, you do science fiction. Now science fiction means you're doing a blockbuster movie. Then it meant you were doing a kiddie show and it was probably syndicated, and you weren't going to make money, and you were going to be, you know, put in the sidebox, in that box.

But the part was so I remember calling my father and saying, what should I do? They're telling me not to do this, and he said, what do you want? I said, I love the role, and he said do it. You can't think these things out, you can't know, just go with what your heart's saying, I'm so grateful that he did, because it was, you know, forty nine years of the best years of my life. I know, it was just seven.

There were dog ears, there were dog years. I started a complete rewatch of the series during the first year of the pandemic, and honestly, i'd forgotten that you were doing twenty six episodes a year, right, Yeah, And I saw that. I was a little gobsmack, but I still forged ahead and got through the whole thing, or most of it. There's some episodes that are not my favorite, so I allowed myself to skip them if I felt like, yeh, good for you. Nevertheless, that's a lot of work.

That's a whole lot of work. And in the first few seasons anyway, it seemed that everyone was in every episode, and then as it went on, they seemed to find a way to not have you be in every episode, or at least maybe just do one scene and come back. And I would imagine that was for your mental health and stamina to help you get through the rest of the season or less of the series. Anyway, I don't think so. Really.

Here, I thought the producers were being magnanimous and trying to get the best out of their casts and all that kind of fun stuff. No, these were the years of their ten more behind you. I think it was difficult for the writers. It was a lot for them to have to incorporate all these characters. Easier to you know, have a couple of shows where they just get to concentrate.

And there were writers who you know, wrote for the Furrangis or wrote for the Klingons, and so that they could focus on those shows. And I for the story, I think it just worked out better. It worked out fabulously as far as I was concerned when you when you mentioned you were talking to your father about taking the and I have to agree with them. I thought it was always thought it was a great role too. But you're stepping into a Star Trek series, and even at that time, the fandom was pretty strong for that show, and I wondered if you had any trepidation about the kind of fans and the kinds of people that are Star Trek fans and this whole Star Trek fandom thing.

I remember I was doing a tryout for a show, a Broadway show in Boston, and I was staying at a hotel where there was a Star Trek convention and it was like these exotic birds, you know, a flock of exotic birds came and landed in the hotel. It was like I'd never seen anything like it, and it was fascinating and I didn't understand why people dressed up. I didn't get it. I think I was well start here. Every new Star Trek show ruined Star Trek, according to the people who watched, ruined it for sure, even you know, it was so funny, I said, so Sniqua, you know I helped ruin Star Trek with Deep Space nine.

Oh yeah, I'm ruining Star Trek. I've ruined started. And if you ask the next generation people, they were told the same thing. So it's always with like, okay, I'm going to have to make space in here for us. It's not easy.

And yeah, I get it. Once you watch something in your it's like getting your favorite drink at Starbucks. If they suddenly change it, it's like, damn it, that's not my drink. That's not the taste that I am used to getting, you know. So it's a little annoying at first.

It takes time. Well, I have to say this particular Star Trek then was always glad to see a newer And yes there were series like Deep Space nine I like better than others, But I really appreciated the expansion of the and still do the expansion of the world. But you're not writing in going, oh, this is great, you did a good job, right, like wrote. You're either writing in because you you love it so much, you're naming your children and getting tattoos, or you are writing because they have ruined Star Trek after med I was somewhere in the middle of that all of that. But still, I think for the most part, most people, at least most people I know, really really enjoyed that part of it.

You're enjoying it now. They're enjoying Deep Space now because it can be watched. You know that it can be binge watched, which is how it needed to be. It's such a streaming show. It was serialized.

People couldn't find streaming. Yeah, what just happened? And why is Kira being grumpy now because you didn't know what happened to me last week? Because we carried these emotions through and we were able to have big character arcs because of that, we changed and shifted, not just because we got older, but because our characters had experiences that lived inside our bodies in the next show. And that's such an interesting thing for a franchise, for a show like you know, the original Star Trek does not have an evolution of character.

It wasn't on that long but three seasons. There's not, right, other than Spock kind of understanding himself a little bit better. There's not a huge evolution of character over that show. And that's somewhat very television familiar, right, that's the sort of old television of I want to come and sit in this warm bath of these characters that I know and I love and I want to spend time with, and I don't want them to change. Right, Oh my god, you're kissing George Clooney.

You're going to take them to afric with you when you leave and leave poor Julia Duffy there to take care of for a baby by yourself. Right And yet Nope, turns out nope, everything, I'm going to go away. The world resets in so much television, and I think now we're in this very different world that Deep Space nine was sort of at the edge of. They were at the edge of the galaxy of you can transform characters over time as people do, and there's so much evolution in those characters over the course of the seasons, and all of Star Trek started doing it, and there are consequences, consequences for things you do. It's not a reset, as you said.

So that's such an interesting It was like Disneyland to be with that company of actors. My god, my god, Reneo verjianoa Avery Brooks, who was, in my opinion, a fabulous number one. That is great to hear because he was on screen. So yeah, you're like, oh, yeah, I'll follow this guy into deep space sit on an station. Yeah.

So I'm curious when the Star Trek phenomenon happened for you, Like, at what point did you realize, Oh, I may spend the rest of my life going to conventions or showing up and people recognize you. But I don't know if people recognize you because you had makeup on. Do people recognize you? If I go to get my computer fixed and he's like, yeah, what can I do for you? And I say, well, my computer and he's like, major Kira, recognize your voice.

Yeah. So you know, especially the people who are very into stem or Steam, they they know, and it doesn't matter what I look like. They know, But there aren't the weirdos that I mean, Yeah, a percentage of them are the weirdos we think of, but if you take any apartment building in New York, it's the same percentage. It's just people. It's that's just what's in the mix.

And it's kind of wonderful because even the weirdos are like, yep, this is your home too, what's going on? Come on in. This is where we all live the tenets of a hopeful future where we Sniqua said, this where we meet each other, where we are neurodiversity, whatever it is, we meet you right there. Hi. I like that, I mean, and I think that has always been in the Star Trek box of theory of what Star Trek is about.

And by the way, let me just add that neurodiversity is often behind what was mistaken as weird where someone would just push it, you know, push in front and just start talking to you. But if they're on the spectrum, it's just that's just how their brain works, and they are actually engaging and brilliant and fascinating and worthwhile listening to. So as we get more knowledge of people. There aren't any weirdos. Yeah.

I think one of the things I like most about Deep Space nine is the characters. Obviously the stories too, but the characters are also well defined, well played by an amazing cast of actors. Their stories and backgrounds are interesting, and there's no attempt to make anybody a carbon copy of somebody else, or a carbon cutout of what you think somebody is or should be. It's fascinating in that way. I've always really appreciated that.

When we were talking before we started, I mentioned that Louise Fletcher as kay Wynn was one of my favorite characters on the show. As much as I hated her most of the time, she also managed to convey a sense of an insecurity, perhaps underneath of what she was doing that kind of shit. It was a vulnerability, yes, yes, which is weird with you and someone who's an arch villain. It was wonderful, and she would be so funny and sweet off camera and we'd be laughing about something. She had the best laugh, and then we'd go to the scene and I would feel my nervous system start to respond to a totally different person, and it was like, I'm scared of you.

It was amazing. She was amazing, and you're right. And also I think that by that time, we started to understand that whatever we did was going to have meaning for other people. So Terry Ferrell, knowing that she is going to do this story of trills, where a trill that she was in love with and now it's in a woman's body, she was really mindful of the importance of that scene. I was mindful of how trauma affected my character and how I represented that, and I couldn't skimp.

I couldn't like go to this safe place and just say the lines and maybe that'll be effective. You know. I wanted to do right by people who went through horrors of war and really be there. Avery knew what it meant to be a single black father and made a point always of having that relationship with Siroc with his son be as front and center as possible. We started to get that there was messaging going out and that we somehow what we just said yes to a job, but now there was a responsibility that came with it.

And I think just about everybody I've spoken to on the shows has taken that responsibility very seriously. Yeah, as you mentioned, with major Kiara. I loved that they let her be as angry and forthright and strong, especially in the beginning, because again, she's just come out of this trauma. She really doesn't want the Starfleet to be there. She just wants these people to go away so they can do what they need to do to get their planet back in some semblance of order.

And they let her be angry and they let her be forceful, and over time it's the edges get smoothed out a little bit, but that doesn't mean that that still isn't under there somewhere, and you don't get to see that a lot. I can't think of another female character that you really get to see that see really play that out over time. And that was one of the beauties of the long term story that they were telling, is that because it was serialized, you got to see the progress. You got to see the progression, You got to see movement forward and sometimes movement back. As things happened.

She reacted to them, that's right, And she got to be a leader. She's one of the first leaders in the Star Trek women world, like true, like I'm in charge and I was in charge before you got here, and I will be in charge after you're gone, because it comes down to me, like I do think she carries that from episode one, which at the time, I mean was it in am I missing something out of the Star Trek world? Coming into this, it felt like the first time there was a I know, there's other leaders in maybe the movies I got all the well there were you know what, here's the difference. There were guest stars who were powerful, were antagonistic, but you know, like I'm not going to take George Glooney away. They're not welcomed into your living room every every week.

So they there were very powerful women in Next Generation, but guest stars and aliens. And I was lucky to be an alien because then I was free of having to be a human woman, a human female. Yeah, it was like that was my excuse. Hey, I'm bajoring. That's just the way I am.

And it was very interesting at the time to get the response that I did from women as well, not just from men, of that's not how a woman is strong, because even women were used to this silo of where it was acceptable to be and you're not getting into that silo appropriately, And it was like, well no, because and it led to so much self doubt in me. It led to so much what's wrong with me? That that is how I am when I'm angry, that is how I respond. That's who I am. And yet that's not a woman, that's not what does that mean?

And I'm getting it from men and women And it took me so long to understand that that was the cultural cap that was the hurting to something that we can accept of what a woman is and you better get in that box. And it's only been recently where I realize, No, there's a full spectrum where I exist, where every woman exists. And the more women we have being represented, the more people on that spectrum all over the place, can help people be seen. You know, we can represent those people in storytelling. Yeah, I think that's amazing and I'm sorry that when you're creating something like that, and it's a particular actor thing, right, you are presenting writers and directors, but you're the vessel that is in front and getting judged.

That's what we do. But that's what you do, right, that's the job. But it was weird to be culturally important to people and have them go that's you're doing it wrong. And not only that it wasn't like I went far away from who I was. I went to who I was, so it was like, now you're wrong.

So that was internalized. Weirdly, it affected me personally, but I doggedly wouldn't stop doing it. With Major Kira, it was like, nope, this, I got to do it this way. I've got to Yeah, But for me, I felt it. It's interesting because obviously it was a much smaller world for each of us because social media didn't exist, and things were starting to expand out from there.

And I mean, obviously I wasn't playing Major care but I kind of felt the same way, like, yeah, she can say these things and do these things that I would never be allowed to do, and that's wonderful that she's able to do that. I guess it never occurred to me that anybody would feel differently, because why not, you know, why can't a woman be that way? And sadly, I think that silo that you mentioned still exists for the most part for women. There is, either consciously or unconsciously a thought amongst most people that, yeah, there are boundaries that women need to stay within, and when they overstep, there's a price to be paid. Because it's perceived they want power, they want this, or they want that, and they're just not doing it right to try to gain those things, you know.

And for men too, men who don't wish to partake in what the patriarchy says is the acceptable way of male behavior, they get told too. It's like, no, that's not how we do it. And that's the gift of storytelling, because you didn't know what was going on other than that's possible and that's happening in the future. Women are like that, So it makes our room just a little bigger every time. Yeah, let's take a quick break.

We'll be right back with more in a no visitor. This message is brought to you by Thenext Dish dot Com. We are living in a time of incredible change. The Next Dish dot Com is a company that trains innovators to be ahead of the game through courses. It helps you create in demand skills every professional should know.

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Let's jump right in. At the end of the day, we just want to be who we are, right, We just want to be who we are. And if we can take the clothes, you know, the tight fitting clothes off that we're told we're supposed to be and just relax into who we are, it's going to be like flowers. There's so much diversity and it's gorgeous. Yeah, it's an ecosystem that needs diversity in order to thrive.

And I think that's the gift that people do respond to in Star Trek and what they forget and they get stuck on what Star Trek. It's it's a metaphor like the people are like, no, Star Trek isn't this and is in some ways the same instinct of no, women can only do this, you know, it's it has to be what I'm familiar with, and that's one of the big human things we've got to deal with. We would love to control our exterior world, and we just can't. We have to keep going the push pull of I want to explore, but I don't want to be met with something I don't understand right right, exactly exactly? Oh God, all right.

So I question about kind of being a mother and an actress and being a mother while you were doing this show, because you talked about making the choice to stay in New Mexico and that hat and you had to be going, my career is a choice, yep. And it did, and it did. It stopped me cold. I got off the hamster wheel. And so those choices that we make for the people in our lives, and that I want this and I want that, and how do I navigate all these roles?

I'm curious how you felt you navigated that through Star Trek and into wildfire and even now you know being able to be a mother, and this is for scientists, this is for every mother. There has to be support and acceptance and lee way and you know, an ability to shift so that she can do what she needs to do. And that didn't exist at all. Back then, there was a Hunter. There was an actor named Hunter.

I can't remember her last name, but I know she went into litigation because they let her go when she got pregnant. And that was very much what was happening when I got pregnant, and I was terrified that I'm going to be fired, and rightfully so, I'm supposed to be this, you know, action figure, and now I'm going to have a baby. I've done it to myself. And it was such a gift that they wrote it in and that they made it okay. But where I was living in the hierarchy and the patriarchy in accepting what all the feelings about mothers back then were, accepting the fact that many mothers said, how can you do what you do?

I just want to be with my children. It's amazing that you that you're not. It doesn't bother you that you know. So even those things, it's a drip, it's just a little drip, but pretty soon that drip is breaking you down pretty well. So I put myself in the position of thinking before anyone else could say it, I can't let this bother anyone.

I can't sit down. I was in labor on set and I went behind the set to get through the worst of it. But I remember hunkering down and they said, you want a chair. He was like, no, no, I'm fine. Thanks.

And of course I didn't tell anyone. Of course I didn't. Oh my yeah, oh my god. And so you finished the day before you went finished the day I went to the doctor and he said, no, you're I can't remember if it was two weeks or three weeks early. I figured this out, and you're not due now, so he stopped.

He stopped it. Oh, and then on the day I was supposed to have the baby, he started it. So when they give you petocin to start your contractions, it's unbelievably painful. So it was tough. But that's how I had my second son.

And he was covered in leunugo, which is hair, which means he was over baked, which means when I went into labor, I should have had him. So but it was like, what, yes, okay, that's what, Okay, yep, stop it anything that's natural for me. I will trust that you are right. I put my trust. I tried to be a good girl.

I tried to have my baby and have it bother, no one. And I said to myself, if anyone has to suffer because I'm working and I have an infant, it's going to be me. And so it was. And of course that's not sustainable at all, not at all, you know. I learned my lesson early on.

There was a show where they thought they were going to use me in the first scene. And my son, my first son, he was three months old when I started the show, and uh, he was sick. They weren't going to use me till the end of the day, which was at least eight hours. I said, can I go home and see my son, make sure he's okay. I have child care for him.

I'll come right back. And it was a woman, a d and she said, you should have thought of that before you took this job. So that was the world I was in, and I accepted it and I went, yes, yes, this is my issue, this is mine to deal with. I don't expect any help. So things have changed big time, thank goodness, which I'm so happy about.

It's so yeah. Yeah, the nineties maybe weren't much better than the A little bit, a little metal, incremental, but come on, and then we slide back. It was a big I think what I was dealing with on Deep Space was, you know, the response of my character was women were more and more in the workplace. Women were starting to be allowed to be who they were and figure out how to do this job. Some people may have become characters in the workplace that they actually weren't, but they thought they needed to be.

We were figuring it out. So I think there was a big backlash in the nineties towards women in the workplace. So I think that's where we were in the culture at that moment. Yeah, there's a lot of stepping forward than getting pushed back and then stepping forward a little bit. This way.

Well, I to pay no attention to what we're doing over here, right like life, Yes, just like the rest of life. All right. So before we leave Star Trek, I wanted to sort of talk about, like you have an asteroid named after you, you get invited, I'm sure to all these conventions and things. What's been like one of the coolest things that has happened because you're part of now this incredible world of Star Trek. A couple of things.

One is I spoke with Samantha Christopherretti, who became the commander of the space station. I went to the European Space Agency and talked to her while she was in space. And when I heard someone say open a channel to the space station, I my mind was ricocheting. I said those words so many times, and yet here I was, and that was a woman, a young woman who had watched me say it, and now she was really on a space station. It was I don't weep over emotional moments like that very often, but I remember just having to leave.

It was overwhelming. The other thing is I do cameos, and very often I'll have a man say, we named our daughter Kira, and would you talk to her about why the character was important, what Kira was about. And I don't hold back, and I talk about you know, and it's sometimes it's for the future when she can actually understand it. But I talk about being full spectrum, being allowed our feelings, being allowed to make mistakes, what that means for a woman, being allowed to have agency and goals. And what knocks me out is that I'll get a note back and the father says, thank you, That's just what I wanted her to hear.

That nuts him. Wow, I'm using my designing women's shirt to wipe my eyes. You made me cry. The father wants his daughter to hear that that's where we are and to have out there. You know, Kira be a you know, we we named our son Dashel not to be an alcoholic writer, but because but to be a good writer.

Because he thought it was cool, because he invented the detective. Okay, that's pretty amazing. And that's the power of television and the power of storytelling and the power of acting, and the power of creating these characters that live in some way separate and apart from you, but you created them and such an amazing gift to the universe and also the Star Trek universe. And there's power in these conversations and in sharing this and the back and forth of what you got, what I got, What we can talk about today, and what young people can hear of where we were, where we are now, where do you want to go? Let's talk about that too, all right, Well, so I hear you're working on a book, I am.

Can you talk about the book. Well, it's called Open a Channel, and it's about the women of Star Trek and their effect on the culture and what the culture was doing to them while they were working. And that's why I've gotten to speak to so many incredible people involved in the franchise over this time spin and I've learned so much. Trust me, the story of my pregnancy. I never even thought about it.

I never told anyone about it until I started writing this book. And I've had so many moments of going, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, And as I do, it's not like I'm bitter about that time. I just love to see how far we have come, and let's talk about where else there is to go. Yeah, that's amazing. I'm very excited about the book.

It's right up our alley, of course, because it's about the women of Star Trek. I love that. And open a channel I assume that has this story you just told us in it. Yeah, that was a big moment for me, big moment, so incredible. And you also you do a podcast with your son I do.

I do Django and I do an intergenerational conversation and it's fascinating for both of us. And it's also always fascinating to do any kind of work thing with a relative, especially a child. And I feel in some ways like this ancient carpenter thing, you know, like I'm going, well, this is how this happens. Of course, in my carpenter fantasy, the sun is going, oh yes, I see now I'll do it the way you do it, and it's not. He's going, well, this is how it happens now and I learn a little something and we both do.

They're lovely conversations. I listened to a couple. They're quite lovely. It's very like warm and inviting, and the conversations are so interesting. It's it's a really fascinating podcast.

So that means so much to me. Thank you so much. Yeah, and your Mama and Nona Instagram so also meaningful and wonderful, like you kind of shifted your Instagram from like pictures of their lives you see that happen. That was like it was very very short pictures and stuff. And I didn't really I'm not big on any you know, keeping up with any of that.

But the minute the pandemic hit, I felt this like it was jumping out at me to help young people because I've dealt with anxiety and depression and not knowing what the next step is so much as so many people do, and I took a deep dive into discovering what worked and what didn't work for me and how to recover. I had immense help recovering from post traumatic stress. So it was just me desperately reaching out and going, look, I know this is tough. This is what helped me with anxiety. This is what helps me right now to sleep.

This is what I just learned about our nervous systems. We can start managing our bodies instead of being victims of them. If we just understand a few chemicals that happen, a few ways that our bodies and our brains are set to just keep us alive. They're not set to keep us happy. We have to do that.

It's like adding something in your iPhone become basic, you know, And unfortunately the biggest thing that it comes basic with our bodies is fear, so that we stay alive. Now we have to add all the rest of the show that will keep us alive and happy or peaceful or content or at least feeling all of it. And I just felt this need to share that so much, and I did it every day because if one person needed it, I wanted to be there for them and Oh, there was a man who was dying and was scared of it, and we talked together through it, and then he didn't write anymore. And there have been friendships and relationships and the people that I see, people I get to meet later on who have had a presence on that site.

And it's really meaningful to me. I don't do it every day. I do it once a week now, but yeah, that's a big deal. That's something I'll keep doing and never monetize it. It's pretty beautiful.

Where can people find you there? There? Yeah, visitor Nana on Instagram. Not so much on but I am. But I don't know.

Twitter's weird, so I don't know what's going on there, but I show up once in a while. But Instagram, that's that's where I really live right now, and on things like this. I thank you both so much for this. This was a wonderful conversation. Is when I met you, I thought it would be, Oh, thank you.

This has been a really dreamy and wonderful and as again, I you know, we found each other at a party. Yeah, that's a good way to find people. I think rare for me, to be honest, I'm usually like well flower and great luck with all of it. It was a huge pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.

Can't thank you enough for this. It's been amazing. Thank you, bye, Thank you bye bye. In today's audiography, you can find all things Star Trek at star Trek dot com. For Nana visitor, you can find her on Instagram at visitor Nanah.

There's also a YouTube channel where some wonderful fan has created a library of her television appearances, and we'll have a link to that on our website. If you want to dive into Star Trek and don't know where to begin. If you are one of those few listeners that have watched no Star Trek in your life, check out Eighties tv Ladies for links to watching the franchise in chronological order and release order. Thank you so much for listening to Eighties tv Ladies. Be sure to tell your friends and family about us, and please, if you like this show and want more Eighties tv Ladies, you can support us at patreon dot com slash Eighties tv Ladies and get some extra cool perks too.

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