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Interview #759: Theoryland: An Hour with Harriet McDougal Rigney, Entry #19

Matt Hatch

Jim said he started missing you after the two of you were done touring for The Fallon Blood , and that’s when you started dating. Was he more like Rand, or more like Mat? In other words, did he make a concentrated effort to charm you, or did you just fall into his lap?

Harriet McDougal

He wasn’t like either of them; he was like Perrin. Well, he had huge shoulders and curly hair, and he had gone through—he was very gentle because he was so big. If there was ever trouble in a class he was in, in grammar school, the teacher always thought he must have done it because he was so big. So he took a lot of thought before he did things, and that’s how he was like Perrin, in both of those ways. And very strong.

Matt Hatch

And do you think he wrote that into Perrin as we know him?

Harriet McDougal

I think he’s all of them.

Matt Hatch

But that’s the part of him that is Perrin.

Harriet McDougal

Yeah, very gentle. And he did set out to charm me. He was…I remember a moment—well, he was nice to Will, who was a kid at the time, and I remember Will came running upstairs to me one day and—they’d been talking downstairs—and he said, “Ma, he wants to take me to the Star Trek movie. Can I go? Huh? Can I? Huh? Huh?” And I said, “Let me come downstairs with you,” and I said, “Can I come too?”

Matt Hatch

Was he surprised when you asked? Or was he…

Harriet McDougal

Oh, I think he said… *mimics pumping her arm in the air* (laughter) If you’ve ever dated a woman with a child, the first thing you do is get the kid on your side. At the time, I was furnishing a doll’s house I had had as a child; it had never gotten properly furnished—and this was really important psychic work I was doing, I guess—and I remember he brought a present to me, and I’ve forgotten whether it was on Christmas or my birthday—and I was sitting at the dinner table, and he was standing over this small box, and I start to open it, and I realized he was going *heavy breathing noises* because he was so anxious, breathing, would I like it? And it was a really beautiful doll’s house dinner table. He spent fifty dollars or something that he really didn’t have. But it was that breathing…“Will she like it? Ohhhh…”

Matt Hatch

Was this when you were still dating?

Harriet McDougal

Yeah.

Matt Hatch

And obviously you liked it.

Harriet McDougal

Yes, yes! I liked his caring so much. That’s what really got me. I didn’t care about the doggone table, that wasn’t the point.

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