Mary McDonnell as President Roslin in the News

This article is hitting the web:

Madame president of 'Battlestar Galactica' wields her power
By KATE O'HARE Knight Ridder Newspapers3/10/2005
Before "Battlestar Galactica," the closest actress Mary McDonnell got to a presidency was playing the doomed First Lady Marilyn Whitmore in the blockbuster film "Independence Day."
Now she's gone from being the woman behind the man to being "the man," as President Laura Roslin in Sci Fi Channel's space epic "Battlestar Galactica," airing Fridays at 10 p.m.
As depicted in the 2003 miniseries that launched this reimagined version of the short-lived 1970s series of the same name, the robotic Cylons turned against their human creators and nuked the 12 human colonies (whose names, like Virgon and Caprica, derive from zodiac signs).
The survivors were forced to flee aboard a hastily assembled fleet of military and civilian ships, led by the Galactica, under Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos). They're on the run from the Cylons and on the hunt for Kobol, which their mythology considers the home planet of mankind, and for the lost 13th colony - Earth.
Along with its military fleet, the 12 Colonies also had a civilian government, and most of that was destroyed. After 43 others in the line of succession perished in front of her, Education Secretary Laura Roslin assumed the presidency in the middle of chaos.
As the show's first full season has progressed - the two-part finale, "Kobol's Last Gleaming," airs March 25 and April 1 - Roslin has made agonizing decisions while trying to keep the survivors fed and alive, and dealing with the internal threat of Cylon agents who appear human. Often, she's butted heads with Adama, who initially referred to her as a "schoolteacher."
Roslin's also doing all this while secretly battling terminal breast cancer.
"Playing this part on "Battlestar'," McDonnell says, "I've been in the position of having to make sometimes military decisions regarding life and death. It has been a huge stretch for my progressive little heart and soul. The first time I had to experience this in the miniseries, I was really disturbed, when I really got inside that moment.
"As the 13 episodes went on, and I got more and more in command, I started to notice the separation taking place, separating the perhaps compassionate person from the practical person that had to keep the bigger prize in mind. You start feeling yourself becoming more male in a kind of cliched sense, but in fact, you start relying on a different side of yourself more often to get through the moment and not experience some of that pain."
Especially delicate is Roslin's relationship with Adama, who holds all the military power in his hands.
"She has a lot of power in a powerless situation," McDonnell says, "because he has control. She can't fly a plane. She doesn't understand it. He could (take over), and will. So my response, as Mary, reading it, "You're kidding.' Then my second response is, "That's exactly what would happen.'"
Roslin's challenge - and that of writer-creator Ronald D. Moore - is to find a credible way to convince Adama to allow the civilian government to stay in control.
"She does it," McDonnell says. "She takes command in certain areas. Here's the other thing about him, she needs to understand him, because she needs to understand his world. She's done a little more thinking about him than the other way around. I'm must a pain in his neck. I'm the annoying schoolteacher.
"She understands there's a man in there who has a really deep respect for a kind of protocol. He's very formal. It would be very hard for him, no matter how annoying she became, to dismiss the idea of the presidency."
And if she has to butt heads with the military, McDonnell's glad the other head belongs to Olmos.
"The best, job, really," she says. "Honestly. Otherwise, if you have to manufacture power, it's so boring, if you have to endow someone with power. He has it. For me, it's like candy."