Summary:
In a 1994 double interview, Star Trek "captains" William Shatner and Patrick Stewart, famous from their television roles, talk with film critics and discuss their careers, their fans, and working together as co-stars, for the first and only time, on the Paramount film Star Trek: Generations.

Details or Sample:
Interview with William Shatner and Patrick Stewart, stars of the film Star Trek Generations (Paramount), 1994

On the top floor of a glitzy Manhattan hotel, amid crisp linen, pink marble, and brass, the national press, wearing faded rugby shirts and crummy sweaters, sits around a big table, buzzing and jawing. The topic is Star Trek Generations. We’re about to met the film’s two top stars. But separately; they won’t be here together. The filthy rumor mill whirs:
Bill Shatner hates Patrick Stewart.

Patrick Stewart hates Shatner’s guts.

Someone says Shatner’s a snob and won’t give autographs. (Several of the journalists, entertainment critics for print media and radio, have brought Shatner’s Tek novels and memoirs for him to autograph, and have pens at the ready. For the kids, they say.)

Says one nervous critic, “Once I wrote that some actor belonged to the William Shatner school of acting.”

“He won’t remember,” another consoles him.

“I did a phone interview with Shatner once,” says yet another. “I asked him, ‘Don’t you think Captain Kirk is a unique character in that you’ve been able to develop him over thirty years?’ He said, ‘Yes.’”

Groans all around. Journalists don’t like one-word answers.

This is a plummy assignment, going expenses-paid to New York to interview Shatner and Stewart, a.k.a. Captains Kirk and Picard, who star together for the first and probably only time in the new movie Star Trek Generations. You know it’s plummy because those attending are mostly men, full-time critics at their papers and stations; the few women are second-stringers and freelancers all. Divided between four tables, they´re waiting to pounce on the stars, who are shepherded around by bone-thin women with coastal haircuts – Paramount Pictures publicity people. Table 4 consists of Southerners, Texans, Midwesterners, the sole black journalist (female), the reporter from the Moonie-run Washington Times, all grubby and ungrateful.

Last night they were bused a few blocks over to screen the film, the seventh in the Star Trek series.

“So how’d you like the movie?” is the question today.

The answers range from “I loved it” to “So-so” and “Feh.”
“I heard they shot the ending twice.”
“Because the test audience hated it.”
“I heard it was because they couldn’t get a performance out of Shatner.”
“I heard that George Takei (the original Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu and author of a recent book about the television show) told Howard Stern that he hates Bill Shatner.”

The rumor mill slams its shutters fast as, finally, Bill Shatner himself approaches the table.

Shatner’s ruddy, dressed in jeans, a work shirt with silver snaps, and a loose, well-worn suede sports jacket. He’s aged – thirty years will do that to you – but at 63 he’s still plenty busy. He raises horses and dogs now, writes prolifically, and works on his new weekly TekWar TV series, set for syndication in January. His gray eyes glitter redly, as if from hay fever. He says good morning. His voice is chesty and beautiful. But we won’t let him disarm us yet:

Aren’t you dead?

Shatner: Yes, but – actually, the critic from Time magazine did an interview and that was his line, too.

In your book, Star Trek Movie Memories, you made a big point of how difficult it was to gear up to play that death scene as Kirk. Then you had to go back and do it again. Was it easier the second time around?

Shatner: It took me some time to think about how I wanted to play the scene, and it required some self-examination and all that kind of thing. So it was very emotional for me the first time I did it. And then, six weeks later when I’m up in Toronto reading the Star and doing TekWar, and I get a call from the producer saying they have to go back and shoot it again, the reaction was, “Was it my performance?” (Laughter.) And they said no. Somehow everybody lost sight of the fact that I had been shot in the back, and it kind of slipped away. They wanted more spectacle, so they changed the shot in the back. But the dialogue remained the same.

So yes, I had to go back and die again, but by this time I had worked out the performance, so I didn’t need to look at it with the clarity of what it’s like to die, and what am I going to be like when I die, and how frightened I am of dying, and what would Captain Kirk be like when he crosses that ocean.

Even though you did die, you’re not necessarily dead – or are you?

Shatner: I understand the nature of your question, having fooled you before. But in this case there’s a whole new cast, and they want their time and place in the sun, and our cast is past.

Are you a workaholic?

Shatner: From my point of view, I’m grasping opportunities. (Laughter.) People who slow down, people who retire, die. But I’m more alive and more sensual, in the full meaning of that word, aware of my senses, now than ever, because of all the things I do.

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Written by: Catherine Rankovic
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