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Although Captain Janeway might have been flustered to get dropped into the Civil War by the iconic “Star Trek” villain Q, Kate Mulgrew already had acting experience with this time period well ahead of “Star Trek: Voyager.” In 1981, Mulgrew and Pierce Brosnan co-starred in “The Manions of America,” a miniseries set in the mid-1800s. Brosnan plays Rory O’Manion, a working class Irishman, and Mulgrew is Rachel Clement, his wealthy British love interest.
Rory gains his own wealth after immigrating to America to escape the Irish Potato Famine, but he can’t forget about Rachel. Eventually, Rachel joins him in the United States and they get married. A lot of time passes over the course of this six-hour exploration of American history — by the third and final part, we’ve gone past the Civil War’s conclusion and Rory is dealing with a failing business on top of marital problems. To make matters worse, his home country is being torn apart by war.
In her memoir, “Born with Teeth,” Mulgrew described what it was like working with Brosnan, revealing that he came to her aid when she lost control of her horse. “Out of nowhere, a strong hand reached over and yanked the reins out of my hand. The horse came to an abrupt stop, and I slid off the sidesaddle and into the arms of a laughing and lovely Pierce Brosnan,” she wrote. “Later, nursing my bruises in a hot tub, I mused that there were worse ways to spend an afternoon than playing Pierce Brosnan’s love interest in an epic miniseries.”
Pierce Brosnan was a big practical joker on set
While Kate Mulgrew had been on TV for several years before landing the role of Rachel in “The Manions of America,” Brosnan was still a relative newcomer, but that didn’t stop his personality from shining through. Mulgrew noted in her memoir that Brosnan was a fan of pranking their castmates on set, no matter how early in the day it was. “Pierce, a true Irishman, was not averse to practical jokes at 5am,” she wrote. “We often found ourselves convulsed with laughter before the first shot was pulled at seven o’clock. We minded our manners around Anthony Quayle and Hurd Hatfield, well-respected veterans, [but] it was as if some mysterious power had unzipped me and out poured weeks of unbridled laughter.”
“The Manions of America” is what led to Brosnan’s big break in the United States. When the miniseries came out in America, he decided to travel to Los Angeles and use any hype the show generated to try and get some Hollywood roles. “I wanted America, I wanted it so bad, with every fibre of my being,” Brosnan told Route. In the end, he didn’t have to wait long for his big break — Brosnan’s first audition was for the titular character in the detective series “Remington Steele,” the role that put him on the map in Tinseltown. Brosnan has since revealed that he based his character on a classic movie star. “Bob Butler, who directed the show, said, ‘We’re making an old movie,’ and I loved Cary Grant movies, so I immersed myself in the world of Cary Grant,” he told Vanity Fair.
