Whoa! Orange Is the New Black actress Kate Mulgrew revealed some pretty unusual secrets about her childhood in a recent interview with the U.K.’s ITV, including the fact that she was born with a full set of teeth.
“They’re actually sort of — they’re pearlescent, they’re blue,” the 61-year-old actress said of her rare condition. “And they’re very dangerous because the baby can swallow them.”
Mulgrew, born and raised in Dubuque, Iowa, added that in addition to her toothy situation (her parents had them removed to be safe), she also had an inability to feel pain when she was a baby.
“They built me a little cage, because I had no sense of pain until I was four years old,” she said. “So I was born with teeth and had no sense of pain. Shakespeare would have had a field day. It’s a witch! That’s what a witch is.”
Prior to her beloved role on OITNB as Russian prison cook Galina “Red” Reznikov, Mulgrew made a name for herself starring as Kathryn Janeway on popular late-’90s TV series Star Trek: Voyager — making her the first female captain in the beloved science fiction franchise.
“I was possessed by this conviction that I would be a great movie star or theater actress,” she said in another recent interview, with the U.K.’s Telegraph. “I didn’t understand that these things are hard-won.”
Season four of Orange Is the New Black will premiere on Friday, June 17, and will see the return of stars Uzo Aduba, Taylor Schilling, Laura Prepon, Laverne Cox, Taryn Manning and more.