The last time we covered Kate Mulgrew, whom you might know as Red from Orange is the New Black or Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, she was narrating a documentary claiming that the sun revolved around the earth. It’s unclear if she holds these beliefs personally, although judging from this interview she seems to have some bizarre ideas. Kate, 61, has a memoir called Born with Teeth, and it’s been out for a year but this is the first time I’ve heard these details reported. She told Lorraine on the UK’s ITV that she was born with “a set of perfect teeth” and that her parents had to have a cage built for her because she had “no sense of pain” until she was four.
Orange Is The New Black star Kate Mulgrew claimed she was born with a set of perfect teeth, during an interview with Lorraine on Thursday.
The actress, 61, who stars as Galina ‘Red’ Reznikov in the series, also claimed she had ‘no sense of pain’ so her parents kept her in a cage for her own safety.
She said: ‘I was born with teeth. Yes, I was born with a set of perfect teeth. They’re actually sort of pearlescent, and they’re very dangerous because the baby can swallow them.’
She told Lorraine Kelly: ‘They built me a little cage because I had no sense of pain until I was four years old.
‘So I was born with teeth and I had no sense of pain. Imagine what Shakespeare would have done with that.’
There’s a video on The Daily Mail too, so she did say these things. I read through the excerpt of Kate’s memoir available on Amazon and she wasn’t put in an actual cage, it was more of a special crib with bars to protect her. Plus she didn’t have a full set of perfect teeth according to her book, just two on top and two on the bottom. The details about her not feeling pain as a child are vague. Here’s the part about her cage/crib and her teeth being pulled out
My father was not surprised when Dr. Sharp visited and announced that I would need a special crib, one with bars on all sides as well as over the top because would you believe it, said the good doctor, but this kid has no sense of pain. Mother was delighted by the novelty of this condition and stood stoically by as my baby teeth were pulled, quickly and without incident, so as to prevent my eating them.
[From Born with Teeth, print edition]
That was all that she wrote about that apparently, because the next excerpt is about how she cared for an infant sister who later passed. So I get the impression that the “didn’t feel pain” and cage part was quite exaggerated. She didn’t write anything about being in that cage at all. Also, how is she saying she had a “set of perfect teeth” when in her book she wrote of her teeth “Two pearls on top and two, nonpareil, on the bottom.” That’s four teeth not a perfect set. Plus congenital insensitivity to pain is not something people grow out of from what I can find. It sounds like it’s just something a doctor told her parents because the real condition is quite serious and I would assume she would have written more about it.
Kate is promoting the new season of OITNB, which is out June 17 and is getting excellent reviews. They really need to send out Laverne Cox to do promotion for this show. Taylor Schilling has been doing interviews too but she’s not making headlines like this.
Photos credit: WENN.com
Of course Captain Janeway was born with perfect teeth. Captain Janeway was born with perfect everything. She probably drank coffee instead of milk too.
I love Kate on OITNB, but she’ll always be Janeway to me.
Love her and you are correct, she will always be Janeway to me too!! Its my favorite star terk after next gen of course 🙂
I like it better than Next Generation. I even like Star Trek: Enterprise better than Next Generation. Blasphemy, I know.
I had no idea she was Captain Janeway!
She’ll always be Mary Ryan to me.
YES!!!
Me too!
OMG! Yes! Thank GOD there are people here as old as me!
Amen. Remember the first episode? Mary walking down the street in Kelly green. I do not miss that shade!
But I still miss Ryan’s Hope.
wow
Well, if you’re going to exaggerate the truth, make it fun.
She sounds a little bent.
I was thinking the comments were a little Carrie Fisher-esque.
Um….I was born with my two upper front teeth and two lower front teeth. They are your baby teeth until your adult teeth come in at age 7ish. Unless “born with” teeth are really loose fro some reason, they dont’ pull your baby teeth or you wouldn’t have any teeth there until your adult ones come in at age 7. My son was also born with his front teeth. The dentist looked at them and said they were fine. I’m not sure I beleive her. She sounds like an exaggerater.
William Shatner did a documentary where he interviewed all the Star Trek captains. Kate Mulgrew came across as not quite playing with a full deck. She’s an odd duck.
My sister was born with her two front teeth. The nurse said it just happens with some babies, it’s normal and its not that weird. But my sister was also born with fingernails that were crazy long, so maybe she just baked for some extra time, who knows? It did convince my mom to just go with the bottle, though.
It does happen occasionally. Though I don’t think doctors pull babies’ teeth like Kate claims.
Maybe in special circumstances, but mine weren’t pulled nor was my son’s.
Did your sister also have to get her teeth pulled? I’m confused as to how a baby could accidentally swallow their own teeth
They’re not actual “teeth” per se. They’re something called neonatal teeth. The nurse explained to my mother that they often aren’t embedded in the gums the same way our regular teeth are, and they actually can come loose and get swallowed. My sister was checked and they found that hers were pretty solid, so they just let her be. But some dentists do still think they should be pulled. So I actually don’t doubt that they might have pulled them.
Baby teeth have no roots, making them easy for the adult teeth to push out when it is time for them to come in. Since they have no roots, babies can swallow them easily if they are loose or fall out naturally. I don’t know if they pull them anymore but they use to. My mom had teeth when she was born (back in the 50’s) and they pulled them.
**Edited to add a fun note. My paternal grandmother ended up with 3 sets of teeth. She was not born with teeth though. She had normal baby teeth, got her normal adult teeth as a child/early teen and then when she was about 19, her front teeth fell out. She was understandably freaked out about this and when she went to the dentist (back in the early 30’s this was) he noticed that she had teeth coming in behind the ones that had fallen out. He monitored her for about a year as every single one of her teeth fell out and was replaced by a new one. Apparently this is extremely rare and she kept them to show people if they asked, usually her students. She was a teacher in small, one room schoolhouses, so sometimes there were younger kids going through the process of losing their teeth. If they were scared or nervous about it, she would bring the teeth in to show them and let them know it would be alright. Also, let’s be honest, if it were you and your teacher had something that cool happen, she would just be the most amazing thing ever. Just a fun tidbit to share 🙂
My little cousin was also born with two teeth, and they had to be pulled right away. The doctors said that, in fact, there was a risk that they would fall off and that she would choke on them. She’s a little over one year old, so it’s not like this happened ages ago. I guess it’s quite rare but it is definitely not some paranormal thing like this actress makes it out to be, lol. Funny story: my niece’s father was freaking OUT when they told him they had to pull the teeth of his only-just-born, teeny tiny baby. For a minute or so he said there was no way he would let them do that, since “SHE WAS JUST BORN”. Thankfully, he calmed down and everything went well!
Baby teeth most definetly do have roots! The permanent tooth erupting causes resorption of the root in the primary tooth, which is why you don’t usually see any roots on them.
Neonatal, or milk teeth, don’t usually have much of a root and are usually unstable.
There are people that are born with teeth, and also get baby and adult teeth, as well as people who are congenitally missing teeth, or have an extra one or two!
The body is a crazy machine!
Considering tumors can have teeth (and hair) this isn’t that odd.
She is fantastic as Red, looking forward to the new season. I usually binge it in a day or two and then feel sad I have to wait so long for the next one.
She seems a little odd, but the cast looks like they get along well.
is this the lady that used to be on Ryan’s Hope yearssss ago?? her face looks familiar.
A crib w/a top on it?? wowww, maybe she is exaggerating to make the story fantastical. I am gonna check out how normal is it for folks to be born w/a few teeth.
LOL, I can never say that you guys do not entertain and stimulate the brain here, heehee.
Here’s an article on birth teeth. Apparently one in 2,000-3,000 births has a baby with teeth.
http://www.thebump.com/a/baby-born-with-teeth
Yup on Ryan’s Hope. I’m old enough to remember her!
I found a reference to natal teeth, which is probably what she is referring too. Apparently these are often pulled out. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003268.htm
My daughter was born with two teeth on top, my midwife and doctor said it was rare but never said anything about her swallowing them. It didn’t effect nursing in anyway either, sounds like much ado about nothing.
She’ll always be Mary Ryan to me.
What I find most peculiar about her is that she got pregnant while she was Mary Ryan, had the baby and put her up for adoption. I was a huge fan of Ryan’s Hope and can’t believe I did not know this. She later reunited with her daughter and they are close, so happy ending. But I just cannot believe that a soap actress could successfully do all that without nobody knowing.
They wrote her pregnancy into the show and had her character give birth. I’ve read her book and she talks about how awful that was. She had to give birth for real, give her daughter up, and then a few days later go back to the show where she had to hold an acting baby and deliver a monologue about how much she loved the baby and would never leave her. She says it was one of the most excruciating things she’s ever done. She also wrote that she made it clear from the start that the baby would be placed for adoption and that a lot of her friends in the industry helped shield her from the media. But she also pointed out that the media in general was far less invasive decades ago and that she would likely not be able to avoid the issue today.
Thanks for the information. I didn’t know all that. I still find it hard to fathom that an unmarried woman with a good income would go through with a pregnancy and put the child up for adoption, all while playing a pregnant woman on Tv. It must have been very painful for her. I remember when she was pregnant on the show. I just don’t recall ever knowing anything about her personal life. I will have to read her book.
Her rational was that, while she certainly could have kept the baby, the father was not present. The book describes her as a pretty strong Christian and it seems like she felt as though a two parent, married household was preferable to her situation. Which, of course, is not for any of us to judge her on. She did eventually track the daughter down and, from what she says now, they have a good relationship and her daughter was raised well by the family she selected. So it really worked out well for everybody.
I remember an old crib at my grandmother’s house that had a foldable top to keep the child from climbing out during the night. I think it was the type of safety thing that Kate might have needed. There was nothing menacing about it, just sort of old-fashioned and a lot like the kid leashes that can be useful when juggling a baby and a rambunctious toddler at the same time. I wouldn’t call foul on that one unless it was like something out of a Saw movie.
I’m wondering if the “inability to feel pain” refers to sensory processing/sensory integration disorder? Information coming in from the world around you is scrambled in the processing between your body and brain; insensitivity or hypersensitivity, including pain, can be one of many many symptoms. “Seekers” crave sensory input and often do risky things seeking that input which when combined with insensitivity to pain, can put them at great risk for serious harm.
Yes, that was my thought as well – likely a sensory integration disorder, but she’s sort of exaggerating it for effect.
Helps explain why she’s always seemed a few fries short of a happy meal.
So excited. Season 3 reinvigorated my love for the show.
I was born with 4 teeth. It happens
Why would a baby swallow them?
I think the doctor just told Kate Mulgrew’s mother that she felt no pain because he wanted to pull those teeth she was born with and didn’t want the mother to think it was going to hurt her at all.
My first thought was that she is in some kind of denial. Maybe her parents kept her in a cage so they didn’t have to take care of her and maybe they pulled her teeth and didn’t care if she felt it.