Characters like Peggy (Hayley Atwell) or Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) may come and go, but James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Shaw) is here to stay. He’s introduced in “The First Avenger” as Steve’s unflinchingly supportive best friend, both before and after Steve gets swole. And while Bucky holds his own in one of the film’s battles, he gets unlucky during an ambush and falls off a train, plunging down into the Austrian Alps.

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This might be a controversial opinion, but I think Bucky is sort of boring in “The First Avenger.” He’s a little too wholesome to be interesting and a little too similar to Steve to feel memorable. That’s why it was a pleasant surprise in “The Winter Soldier” when Bucky returned as a brainwashed superhuman Hydra soldier. Bucky was no longer a goody two-shoes; he was a tortured anti-hero who was only saved because Steve refused to give up on him.

Bucky’s evolution throughout the MCU is slow and steady. By the time “Civil War” picks up, Bucky is still a wildcard and is now being protected almost solely by Steve, as nearly everyone else wants him dead for one sympathetic reason or another. From there, things improve for Bucky over the next few MCU films; by the time he shows up in “Brave New World,” he’s largely back to the reliable, heroic man we met in “The First Avenger.”

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There’s an argument to be made that Bucky is the real protagonist of the “Captain America” movies. (Or, at least, he’s the main protagonist of the first three films.) Whereas Steve Rogers is already the ideal leader from start to finish, Bucky is the one constantly forced to change. He’s a man who falls into the depths of Hell and must painstakingly climb his way back out. This arc can’t happen without Steve’s involvement, but that doesn’t change how it’s still Bucky, not Steve, who is going through the more compelling, transformative journey. Bucky is the true heart and soul of the first three “Captain America” films; it makes sense that he’d be the only original character still around for the fourth.

Watching Bujold’s footage, one can see that she might not have worked out. Bujold is a classically trained actor used to working on the stage and in films, having collaborated with notable directors like Alain Resnais, Brian De Palma, and David Cronenberg. She was no stranger to mainstream blockbusters either, having also appeared in films like “Earthquake” and Disney’s “The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark.” She even had a few TV gigs in the 1960s in her native Canada, but had only done TV movies since then. “Voyager,” it seems, was a massive TV production that moved at lightning speed, and Bujold couldn’t catch up.

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Wang recalled Bujold being antisocial on the “Voyager” set, often running out of the room in between takes and not doing much interacting with him or any of the show’s other cast members. Curious about her thoughts regarding the series, Wang said he had to intercept one of her evacuations just to ask how things were going. He recounted the following interaction:

“[S]he looks at me and, in her French-Canadian accent, she said, ‘I feel as if I cannot trust anybody.’ And I said, ‘What? You can’t trust anybody?’ ‘Yes, when I first agreed to take the role of Janeway, I tell the producers that I want to have no nonsense with my hair. I want my hair down, I don’t want it up. I don’t want a lot of makeup … I want her to be Captain first and a woman second.'”

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It seems that Bujold had spent some time developing Janeway into a character she was comfortable playing, but that the show’s producers had kept changing her looks, altering her hair and makeup to get it “just right.” Bujold hated that so much time was being spent on her character’s appearance, feeling it was interfering with her acting.

Wang saw how upset Bujold was, and understood that she felt betrayed. He continued:

“Literally, she was very set about it. ‘This is what I will do. I have a very clear picture about [how] I will be Captain Janeway.’ And then she said the producers agreed. ‘They agreed with me, but then before we start filming, they change everything.’ So, she felt she was kind of given a certain leeway to do what she needed to do [to] prepare herself to be Captain Janeway, and then it was taken away. It was like, ‘Sorry, you can’t do all the things that we agreed to.'” 

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An article in TV Guide in 1994 also related a moment when Bujold became angry at an on-set photographer who was seemingly taking photos of her butt without asking. The photographer said he was getting images for a potential Captain Janeway action figure, but the incident made Bujold uncomfortable. She left the set after two work days, after which Mulgrew was called in to take her place. Mulgrew had a lot more TV experience and took to the fast pace right away. Given how often Janeway’s hair changed throughout “Voyager,” she was also clearly okay with whatever the hair-and-makeup department wanted.

Bujold hasn’t worked on a TV series since her involvement with “Voyager.” Her next two movies after that were 1996’s “The Adventures of Pinocchio” and the celebrated 1997 indie film “The House of Yes.” Wang, meanwhile, would later appear on the animated show “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” playing Harry Kim and dozens of his duplicates. They both seem to be doing well.

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