Most Recent Posts

Action, espionage and secrets fill the new NBC show American Odyssey.

But Peter Horton, the show's co-creator and executive producer, says it's easiest to describe the show by saying what it's not. "It's not a police show, it's not an FBI show, it's not a CIA show," he tell's NPR's Arun Rath. "It's a modern-day thriller told in three story bubbles, basically, about three very ordinary people."

Those three people all stumble upon the same massive government conspiracy: A lawyer unearths a cover-up, a political activist tries to expose it and, at the center of it all, a soldier, Sgt. Odelle Ballard, struggles to get home from North Africa after her team is wiped out by the U.S. government.

"There's a really human story underneath all this action and tension. For us that's the little dirty secret underneath — that this is a character piece. But the tension on top of it's what drives it."

- Peter Horton

The show takes its name from Homer's epic The Odyssey.

"The thing that stuck with us was the basic theme of someone going through a real journey or an odyssey to get home," Horton says. "There's something achy about that theme, so we just started running with that — but that's the only thing we stole from Homer."

Interview Highlights

On whether the government conspiracy plot points are a product of the post- Edward Snowden era

It's a combination, I think, of the post-Snowden era and the post-Citizens United era ... where suddenly you can give as much money as you have to a candidate to promote your cause. It's post-Snowden in the sense that indeed what we know is the extent to which not only government agencies and, frankly, private industry can invade our private space. It's also the post-Citizens United because this series is ultimately about power: Do we have it as individuals in our country or anywhere in our world? They're three Davids up against the Goliath of money and power.

On portrayals of Muslim terrorists and the potential for criticism

I think especially with the Muslim world, there's such trope, such stereotype out there. And it's not the Muslim world — it's a segment of the Muslim world. So really ... the fun of it is taking on a trope and saying "OK, here it is, yes that does exist in our world," and then suddenly you'll see a character in episode three comes along who is a "terrorist" but has a whole different point of view — and what you start to find is that his point of view is reasonable, you know, he's human. He's not a bad guy.

On the risks of setting a show in the present and incorporating news events like the Greek election

The Greek election was a shock to us because we started working on this three years ago ... way before the Greek election stuff ... it was just at the beginning of Greece's problems and we thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting if there was a candidate who came along and it was a people's candidate who said, 'I'm gonna just toss this debt and we're gonna pull out of the eurozone'? " Well, lo and behold, right around the time our show launches, that's what happens in Greece.

So, so far, for better or worse, world events have cooperated with our story.

I was born in Vietnam and fled as a refugee in April of 1975 with my family to the United States. And even though I grew up as an American, deeply Americanized, this shadow of the war and of history hung over me, because I was constantly hearing stories about what had happened to the Vietnamese people from my parents or from the extended Vietnamese community that I was living in. And so I just absorbed that sense of a persistent memory, of persistent trauma, of this feeling that the war was not over, and that the country had been lost, and that we still hoped that one day we would take that country back.

On the Vietnam War in American movies

When I was growing up in the 1980s, the idea that Hollywood was fighting the Vietnam War again, through all manner of popular movies that many people have seen, was very important to me. Because I would go to these movies and on the one hand, I would identify with American soldiers [like Rambo] because I was an American moviegoer.

[Rambo] is an action hero. He's Sylvester Stallone. He's beautiful on screen. There's pleasure to be had in shooting big guns and showing off big muscles — until the moment when I realized, "Wait a minute, I'm also the gook on the screen being killed."

I remember sitting and watching Platoon in a movie theater, and when the Vietnamese were shot, people would cheer. I was like, "Wait, that's weird, who am I supposed to identify with at this moment?" ...

Apocalypse Now was a movie that was very important to me. I think I saw it when I was 10 or 11 years old, one of the early movies I saw on a VCR — [and it] totally traumatized me. My voice would shake even 10 years later describing a scene from the movie where the sailors massacre a sanpan full of Vietnamese civilians.

On the one hand, it's an incredible work of art. I think I admire that film. On the other hand, it puts me in a very difficult situation as the Vietnamese person who gets killed in the movie. ...

It's much better to be the villain and the anti-hero than to be the extra who gets killed. And that's what essentially is happening in American Vietnam War movies of the 1980s. Yes, they depict a very dark side of the American experience, but that also means that they cast Americans as the central subjects of history.

On whether the Captain's story is the great American story

He has to come here and remake himself. And actually, part of the story is that he first came to the States in the '60s as a foreign exchange student. And this is where his love affair with America begins. So he's certainly aware of all these issues about being a part of the American dream, of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, of reinventing yourself in America in a completely new fashion.

He's infatuated with all those things, but he's deeply skeptical of them at the same time. Because he's absolutely cognizant that all of this narrative of the American self-transformation is partially what justified the American intervention in Vietnam, and partially how Americans saw themselves in Vietnam.

Vietnam War

Action, espionage and secrets fill the new NBC show American Odyssey.

But Peter Horton, the show's co-creator and executive producer, says it's easiest to describe the show by saying what it's not. "It's not a police show, it's not an FBI show, it's not a CIA show," he tell's NPR's Arun Rath. "It's a modern-day thriller told in three story bubbles, basically, about three very ordinary people."

Those three people all stumble upon the same massive government conspiracy: A lawyer unearths a cover-up, a political activist tries to expose it and, at the center of it all, a soldier, Sgt. Odelle Ballard, struggles to get home from North Africa after her team is wiped out by the U.S. government.

"There's a really human story underneath all this action and tension. For us that's the little dirty secret underneath — that this is a character piece. But the tension on top of it's what drives it."

- Peter Horton

The show takes its name from Homer's epic The Odyssey.

"The thing that stuck with us was the basic theme of someone going through a real journey or an odyssey to get home," Horton says. "There's something achy about that theme, so we just started running with that — but that's the only thing we stole from Homer."

Interview Highlights

On whether the government conspiracy plot points are a product of the post- Edward Snowden era

It's a combination, I think, of the post-Snowden era and the post-Citizens United era ... where suddenly you can give as much money as you have to a candidate to promote your cause. It's post-Snowden in the sense that indeed what we know is the extent to which not only government agencies and, frankly, private industry can invade our private space. It's also the post-Citizens United because this series is ultimately about power: Do we have it as individuals in our country or anywhere in our world? They're three Davids up against the Goliath of money and power.

On portrayals of Muslim terrorists and the potential for criticism

I think especially with the Muslim world, there's such trope, such stereotype out there. And it's not the Muslim world — it's a segment of the Muslim world. So really ... the fun of it is taking on a trope and saying "OK, here it is, yes that does exist in our world," and then suddenly you'll see a character in episode three comes along who is a "terrorist" but has a whole different point of view — and what you start to find is that his point of view is reasonable, you know, he's human. He's not a bad guy.

On the risks of setting a show in the present and incorporating news events like the Greek election

The Greek election was a shock to us because we started working on this three years ago ... way before the Greek election stuff ... it was just at the beginning of Greece's problems and we thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting if there was a candidate who came along and it was a people's candidate who said, 'I'm gonna just toss this debt and we're gonna pull out of the eurozone'? " Well, lo and behold, right around the time our show launches, that's what happens in Greece.

So, so far, for better or worse, world events have cooperated with our story.

Even if you don't know Kate Mulgrew's name, you know her work. She currently plays Red, the formidable prison kitchen manager in the series Orange Is the New Black. And for seven seasons she was Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager.

i

Mulgrew starred as Captain Kathryn Janeway, the first woman to command a Federation Starship, in Star Trek: Voyager. CBS Photo Archive/Delivered By Online USA/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption CBS Photo Archive/Delivered By Online USA/Getty Images

Mulgrew starred as Captain Kathryn Janeway, the first woman to command a Federation Starship, in Star Trek: Voyager.

CBS Photo Archive/Delivered By Online USA/Getty Images

"Nothing could be more challenging, more arduous, or more rewarding than that part on that series," Mulgrew tells NPR's Tamara Keith.

But the story behind the actress is more dramatic than anything she's played on screen. In her new memoir Born With Teeth, Mulgrew pulls back the curtain on her own life with an honesty that's raw and refreshing. It's not your typical, "Oh, the people I've known" celebrity story.

At the heart of Mulgrew's story is a choice she made when she was just 22 years old, when her acting career was on the rise.

Interview Highlights

On getting pregnant and putting her baby up for adoption

Born With Teeth

A Memoir

by Kate Mulgrew

Hardcover, 306 pages | purchase

Purchase Featured Book

TitleBorn With TeethSubtitleA MemoirAuthorKate Mulgrew

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?

Amazon

Independent Booksellers

Nonfiction

Biography & Memoir

More on this book:

NPR reviews, interviews and more

I found myself pregnant at the age of 22 while I was playing Mary Ryan on a very popular soap opera called Ryan's Hope. And I immediately called my mother who was still in a passage of grief over the loss of her daughter Tessie, my sister Tess. ... I said to mother, "This is going to be very difficult, Mom, but I have to tell you the truth: I'm pregnant."

And she said, "Well, that's too bad. You've made a big mistake, kitten, and now you're going to have to fix it. And the only way you can fix it is to give the baby up for adoption. So I think you should go over to Catholic charities and find a wonderful social worker who will guide you through this process and you will do the brave thing and you will give up this baby. So, kitten, pull yourself together and do what you know you need to do. You won't be the first and you certainly won't be the last — " I think she said "actress" who's ever given birth to an illegitimate child. So that was that.

On how she went back to work on the set of Ryan's Hope just a few days later

Possibly more harrowing than the birth itself in terms of my sense of loss, my sense of disequilibrium, my understanding that the size of what I had done would never leave me. The dimension of the decision was not only epic but infinite. And whereas my teacher had promised me that the work would lift me up, in this particular case, three days after the birth of that baby, being handed a tiny stunt baby by the studio nurse and told to start a monologue ... and the monologue is a promise of fidelity and endurance, love and maternal care — I just thought I had to tap into something that I didn't even know I had in terms of sheer mettle because, the earth I had known .... disappeared.

i

Mulgrew plays Red, a formidable prison chef, in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. Ali Goldstein/Netflix/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Ali Goldstein/Netflix/AP

Mulgrew plays Red, a formidable prison chef, in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.

Ali Goldstein/Netflix/AP

On coping with the many personal losses she's endured

I have to be very straight with you about this — I've never considered it preponderance of loss. I've met too many people who've lost far more than I've lost. Far, far more! So I don't look at it that way, I just looked at it as my lot. When you are born into a big Irish Catholic family, these are the odds I guess. Somebody's going to leave you. I couldn't have predicted that it would be two sisters and I couldn't have predicted that one of them would be so deeply, deeply, deeply loved by me. But such is life!

And as for my relationships with men, well, I know a lot of women who've had a lot more! ... What I think I tried to call on in the book, is my sense of vulnerability. My sense of being just a middle-class girl from Dubuque, Iowa, being thrown into the world early and having these experiences in such a vivid and big way — I think that's what hits you when you read the book and when you begin to understand my life.

On how her life might be different if her daughter hadn't been adopted

I think about it all the time and did for those 20 years before I met her. ... I'm not one of those who will ever say to you "No regrets." I have serious regrets. And I think most thoughtful people do, if they live a life as I have lived mine with a great deal of abandon and passion.

I regret that I could not have raised her. I regret that I saw that decision as an impossible one. I regret that my mother was in such an agony of grief that she could not help me raise this child. And I regret, of course, the tangential pain, the ancillary pain that caused my daughter's father.

But do I regret her? Not for one second. And this is the thing of life. This is the deep mystery. Not for one second do I regret that girl or giving birth to that girl, who is now a fundamental, integral part of my life and part of my ongoing learning about the vicissitudes of love and loss.