Delenn (1955-2021)
The first time I saw Mira Furlan on screen I paid little attention to her. It was the mid-1980s, and my hours were divided almost exclusively among my job in Seattle’s Lower Queen Anne district, my apartment on Capitol Hill and the Harvard Exit Theatre, a block away. I saw every international and independent release that showed up in that arthouse cinema’s weekly rotation.
One week it was a Yugoslavian movie by Emir Kusturica called When Father Was Away on Business. Set against the estrangement between Tito and Stalin in the late 1940s and told from the point of view of a young boy, the film’s title referred to the story the child’s mother makes up to explain her philandering husband’s absences. While it was a fine film that showcased the country’s religious and ethnic diversity, I took little note of the actors since we did not see many Yugoslavian movies in America, and in a few short years Yugoslavia wouldn’t be a country anymore anyway.
Furlan was born in 1955 in Zagreb, Croatia, where she became a prominent stage and screen actor. As the Balkans de-stabilized in parallel with the Soviet Union, the touring theater company of which she was a part—and which continued to cross borders as the region descended into turmoil—received death threats from both sides in the conflict. In 1991 she and her husband, the writer and director Goran Gajic, emigrated to New York. She moved to Los Angeles when offered a starring role in a new science-fiction television series.
She later went on to other guest and recurring roles in well-known TV shows. She appeared on such series as NCIS and Law & Order: LA and played a former archaeologist on the series Space Command. She may well be familiar to the greatest number of TV viewers for her regular role as the rugged French scientist and survivalist Danielle Rousseau on ABC’s Lost. It was a part that suited her well, as Rousseau was one of the most determined and self-reliant of that popular show’s sprawling cast.
She will always be most closely associated, however, with the role she played throughout the entire run of Babylon 5. Like most of the personalities on that series, the planet Minbar’s ambassador to the titular space station had her own sweeping character arc. In the pilot movie and in the show’s first season, Delenn was, like her fellow Minbari, hairless and noteworthy for a distinctive bone structure on her head. Originally, the character was conceived as asexual or even male, but convention ultimately dictated she would be female. At the beginning of the second season, she underwent a transformation that made her a Minbari-human hybrid, allowing the actor to display her long dark hair. Over time she became the love interest and then wife of the station’s captain, John Sheridan. If I was especially taken with that particular storyline, it was no doubt because I was at the time in a narrative arc of my own that resulted in my marrying an alien.
Their story reached an emotionally soaring conclusion in the final regular episode “Sleeping in Light,” in which Sheridan’s days must end prematurely because of a sacrifice he had made years earlier. Because Minbari are very long-lived, Delenn must look forward to long years without him. There is now a cruelty in that narrative, given that Furlan—who died last Wednesday of complications from the West Nile virus at only 65—should have left behind her grieving friends and collaborators, particularly those from B5, not to mention her husband and son.
In an emotional tribute on Facebook, B5 creator and showrunner J. Michael Straczynski told of how he tried to honor her experiences in her native country through the character’s speeches in the plot arc involving Minbar’s civil war. He likes to recount how his scripts struck a chord with her, culminating with her showing up at his office door in full make-up, wearing a robe with a cup of tea in hand, saying, “So, how long did you live in Yugoslavia?”
He also told the amusing story of her first visit to a fan convention and how she did not really comprehend what it was all about, but gamely went along with it all anyway. During an audience Q&A, a fan raised his hand and requested her to say the words “moose and squirrel.” She complied, causing the room the erupt “in one of the longest sustained laughs I’ve ever seen at a convention.” She had no idea about The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle or why those words in her Croatian accent would so delight American baby-boomers, but it only mattered that the audience was happy.
The tributes to Furlan from her former cast members on social media have been wonderful and heartbreaking.
“We laughed a lot. Even with foam rubber glued to our heads,” wrote Bill Mumy, who played her aide Lennier. “We shared 27 years of friendship. I will sure miss our ‘Let’s Get Gloomy With Mira and Mumy’ lunches…”
“I love you. I loved you. I will always love you my sweet, funny, beautiful sister,” posted Claudia Christian, who played station commander Susan Ivanova. “There are no more words just air, holes and pockets of loss dappling these human forms.”
According to her New York Times obituary, Furlan had been working on an autobiography. In an excerpt posted on her website, she wrote, “I look at the stars. It’s a clear night and the Milky Way seems so near. That’s where I’ll be going soon.”
What’s left to say except perhaps to quote the final spoken line in the final episode of the final series of Babylon 5? It’s said in voiceover by Susan Ivanova.
“As for Delenn, every morning for as long as she lived, Delenn got up before dawn and watched the sun come up.”
-S.L., 27 January 2021
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