Beware of SPOILERS for Stargate Universe Season Two in this article.
One of the most compelling guest characters on Stargate Universe was Dr. Amanda Perry, a brilliant scientist and friend of Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle) back on Earth. Her visit to Destiny via the Ancient communication stones was an incredible experience … not just because she was visiting an alien space ship traveling through a distant galaxy, but because in her own body back on Earth Amanda was a quadriplegic.
The character was portrayed by actor Kathleen Munroe, who made her debut in the first-season episode “Sabotage.” Munroe talked about her casting, her experience on SGU, and the remarkable Dr. Perry in a new interview with “Dial the Gate.”
Prepping for the role meant working through the ways in which people feel and move within their bodies, often unconsciously. “There’s is stuff that we’re not consciously aware of in our own bodies all the time,” Munroe said. “Just trying to bring that sense of newness and discovery, and pleasure [to the part] — I think that was the thing I wanted to explore with her. The pleasure of touching, and sipping, and then of course it evolved …”
Check out this clip from the conversation:
Complicating Amanda’s time on board Destiny was also the knowledge that she was having these experiences on borrowed time: once her mission to fix the ship’s F.T.L. engines was complete, she would return to her own body on Earth.
Munroe was compelled by “the idea that accomplishing the mission means losing this freedom,” she said. “I’m here to do a job, and once I do the job that’s it. I want to do the job well — it’s competing goals. I have the goal to excel at what I do and solve this problem that needs solving, and also solving that problem means I’m not needed any more and that means I need to go back. And I think that was a complicated thing to play.”
Munroe also talks about her return to play a different Amanda in SGU‘s second season. Dr. Perry was murdered while in Ginn’s body, and presumed to be lost forever — until her untethered mind found its way to another person using the stones. Perry’s consciousness was transferred into Destiny‘s computer, where she could live on — and pursue a love affair with her old friend Nick.
“Seizure”
“The physicality of that one is different, because she’s not really in a body now,” Munroe said. “She runs down the hallway because she’s a little bit more of an ‘ethereal spark’ at that point. So I wanted to make that a little bit different.”
Head over to “Dial the Gate” on YouTube to find the full interview with Kathleen Munroe. While you’re there, subscribe to GateWorld’s YouTube channel for more Stargate content!