Major Kira Nerys is a former member of the
Bajoran underground. She is now an outspoken critic of the provisional government
of Bajor. Having fought for freedom all her life against the Cardassians
when they invaded Bajor, it has angered her to see the older leaders throw
it all away through their petty dissensions. She has been trying without
success to reach the Kai (spiritual leader of Bajor) herself to air her
grievances.
So it is very possible she was sent by the government to be the Bajoran administrator at the space station simply to get her outspoken voice out of earshot. Kira loathes the Cardassians and she committed atrocities against them in the name of freedom, some of which bother her. But others in the Bajoran underground begin a new wave of terrorism and she is forced into a moral quandary about tracking them down and bringing them to justice. Some of them consider her a turncoat.
Nana Visitor,
née Tucker, was born in New York City on July 26, 1957, and was raised
there, where her father was a Broadway choreographer and her mother, Nenette
Charisse, taught ballet and ran a dance studio. At the age of seven Visitor
began to study dance at her mother's studio, and she began her career on
stage soon after graduating from high school. She then accepted some television
roles in New York before moving to Los Angeles in 1985 and, after a slew
of guest appearances, accepted the role of Major Kira Nerys in Deep Space
Nine. The filmographyattempts to document all of her stage, television,
and film credits. Her estranged husband, too, is an actor, and their son
Buster was born in 1992.
Tough but vulnerable, hardheaded but secretly romantic (for the right man, at least) -- that's Major Kira Nerys, the DEEP SPACE NINE character portrayed by actress Nana Visitor. It's been a long strange trip for Visitor -- she can recall watching reruns of classic STAR TREK in her youth, and her discover, while working on a play in Boston, that there was a STAR TREK convention going on in town. "People were in costume and I thought--what a great thing! It's like being in a club and you can go to any city and be a part of this wonderful thing. And I was jealous. I wanted in on this, but who knew? Who knew this would be the way I did it?"
How did she do it? The same way most people in the performing arts did: by paying her dues. At least she started early. Born on the West Side of New York City, Nana Visitor grew up in and around the theater thanks to her performing family. Her mother was a ballet teacher in charge of a dance studio in New York; her father choreographed many successful Broadway musicals. In fact he met Nana's mother as one of her students.
By the age of seven, Nana was studying ballet at the dance studio her mother ran, and by age 14 she was in her high school musicals. She had the opportunity to attend college at Princeton, but Visitor turned it down to be a chorus girl in a stage musical. She never regretted this decision, because she soon found regular work at her chosen craft.
Visitor appeared in productions of Gypsy with Angela Lansburry,
My One And Only (where whe worked with her mother's former
student Tommy Tune), 42nd Street, A Musical Jubilee, and
The Ladies Room. As a young actress she secured an early film
role in the 1977 film THE SENTINEL, a horror movie filmed in New York City.
Before moving to Los Angeles, Visitor had regular roles on the New York based
soap operas RYAN'S HOPE and ONE LIFE TO LIVE.
Moving to Los Angeles in 1985 expanded Nana Visitor's horizons in film and TV work. She landed the role of Bryn Newhouse, one of the main supporting characters, in a TV show based on the film WORKING GIRL, but the series was short lived. She also secured guest shots on THIRTY SOMETHING, EMPTY NEST, MURDER SHE WROTE, MATLOCK, L.A. LAW, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, BABY TALK, and JAKE AND THE FATMAN. In 1987 she starred opposite Sam Jones in the ill-fated TV pilot of THE SPIRIT, based on Will Eisner's classic comic strip character. Nana played Ellen Dolan, the title character's romantic interest.
When Visitor auditioned for the role of Major Kira, she concentrated on the great pain in the character's life--a pain born of watching her people brutalized by decades of foreign occupation. To find that pain in her own life, Visitor drew on her own experience of childbirth. "Freedom fighter, nothing! Give birth!" she told SUPERSTAR FACTS magazine. "So I went out the morning [of the audition] and I got a pair of Doc Martens, and I put them on and felt like Major Kira. I felt like I'd just been through mud and rolled around and fought people and gotten a few Cardassians. Then I got there, I threw open the door, did two scenes, and left! I did the same thing for Paramount when I went back."
"I found out weeks later, when they got to know me, that they said, 'Well . . . she's really right for the role, but is she going to be a NIGHTMARE? This is an unpleasant woman!' They didn't realize that this was Major Kira, and Major Kira just couldn't be bothered talking to people; she's going to do what she's got to do and she's out of there! So that's what I did!"
She got the role.
Visitor also admitted that the episode "Duet" wasn't just a powerful experience to watch, but to film as well. "My thought, every time I saw him, was that I was confronting pure evil, and I was confronting everything that's in the world today that hopefully won't be there in the 24th century. There were takes were I was bursting into tears, and I'd go to the director and say please, don't print that 'cause it was wrong for her to be in tears for the whole show. Very often I'd have to go somewhere and just get it all off. It was wrenching, and it was hard and Harris Yulin, our guest star, was wonderful."
Nana felt she got a great deal out of working on that episode. "Kira went through a lot and she had tremendous growth, and so did I. I used to turn off the TV when I saw civil wars or starvation and all the upsetting things in the world. Since that show, I watch. You can't turn it off; you can't pretend that it's not out there and that's the change that happened to me."
The most difficult aspect of the series for her is the one and a half hour makeup session she must endure each morning and then the long hours spent at the studio. There have been times when she arrived at the studio at four o'clock in the afternoon and was still there working at two o'clock in the morning.
One amusing incident she relates involves the time she had completed hair and makeup when, still wearing her street clothes, she exited the makeup trailer and slipped and fell on rain slicked steps. Unable to move, she was taken to a doctor who did a double-take when he saw her nose until she explained that it was just makeup and she worked on STAR TREK.
During DEEP SPACE NINE off-season, Nana Visitor spends time with her husband
and her child, who she calls Buster. After she'd been working on DS9 a few
months she started bringing her baby to the studio with her so that she could
spend more time with him. She enjoys going to STAR TREK conventions and meeting
fans. Nana is perfectly willing to sign autographs and if it takes three
hours for everyone to get an autograph, then she'll sign for three hours.
And she's not interested in hurrying people along. She likes to meet them,
look into their eyes and make a connection. To her the fans are what makes
STAR TREK an enduring hit.
Mail to Nana Visitor
ENVY, c/o Kimberley Junius, 2116 W. Garfield Blvd, Chicago, IL 60609 - U.S.A.
For comments, suggestions, ideas etc.etc. please Mail-me.
by Mario Guatteri