Star Trek: 10 Biggest Takeaways From Patrick Stewart's Memoir And 1 That Wasn't
A life in Movies and TV is only just the tip of the Stewart memoir mountain.
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00:0010 biggest takeaways from Patrick Stewart's memoir and one that wasn't.
00:05Number 11. Wasn't he direct? Making it so covers virtually every aspect of Patrick Stewart's
00:11career from his birth to on the poverty-stricken streets of the city he was born in up until the
00:17writing of the book. But one thing that does seem to be overlooked is his time behind the camera
00:24on Star Trek. As you'll know, he directed several episodes of The Next Generation,
00:29beginning with In Theory, including A Fistful of Datas, and going right up to the penultimate
00:34episode, Preemptive Strike. He doesn't go into detail on those, nor does he go into detail about
00:40his time as a producer on Star Trek Insurrection, for example, though he does express disappointment
00:47with how that film turned out, as well as its follow-up, Star Trek Nemesis. We must confess
00:52that this is a little disappointing that he didn't go into detail on these points of his
00:57career, because if nothing else, it would be lovely to see a sort of retrospective and deep
01:04dive on the understanding that he gained from and with his fellow castmates, particularly ones like
01:10Jonathan Frakes, who would go on to become such a prolific director as well. Number 10. The early
01:16days were challenging to revisit. The early stories of Star Trek The Next Generation have
01:22reached near-mythological status. So not all of them make it into the book, but some of the stories,
01:27such as Patrick Stewart trading up to a Honda Prelude while some of the other cast members
01:33were getting their BMWs and Mercedes, is actually pretty funny. He does recount that he stayed away
01:38from conventions for the first couple of years of The Next Generation, because he felt it was
01:42so important to concentrate on just building up the role with his own performance. In preparation
01:48for writing the memoir, he says that he did rewatch the entirety of The Next Generation,
01:52and perhaps a little unsurprisingly, found such early, early episodes as The Naked Now and The
01:58One We've Promised to Stop Discussing as pretty difficult to sit through. He cites the show's
02:045th and 6th years as something of a highlight, both in terms of directing, writing, acting,
02:10that everything was firing on all cylinders. He does also say that going into the 7th year,
02:17he felt that the quality of episodes were not up to what he was used to, and he was therefore
02:23satisfied that The Next Generation came to an end after the 7th year.
02:289. Not a Pop Music Maestro
02:31Before his time in Star Trek, he had appeared in David Lynch's version of the movie Dune.
02:38Obviously, today we're all thinking of the amazing Denis Villeneuve versions,
02:43both the one that's released and the one that's coming, but this was a vision.
02:48While on set, he had been cast as Gurney Halleck, and he got talking to another young Englishman,
02:56who he found out played bass, and Patrick Stewart thought, wow, double bass, that's really cool.
03:03He was technically correct, because this young Englishman would play the double bass in the
03:09music video for a fairly popular song that was released in the 80s,
03:14Every Breath You Take. Because once Stewart asked this young musician,
03:19who then informed him, well, actually, I was talking about the bass guitar, he said,
03:22oh, do you play in a group? He said, yes, I play with the police.
03:26And he says, you play in the police band? Basically, Patrick Stewart hadn't a clue who
03:31Sting was, and this became a riot on set. Sting apparently was very gregarious about it,
03:37and said, this is perhaps, maybe you just hadn't heard of me, that's absolutely fine.
03:42The police were pretty popular at the time. Now, while Sting may not have passed much
03:47comment on it, a lot of the rest of the cast and crew thought it was absolutely bloody hilarious.
03:51Years later, Patrick Stewart would make his own album of music, although this one was more of a
03:56parody of country and western songs, and if you haven't seen the trailer, I beg you, right now,
04:02go and watch it. Number eight, getting lynched.
04:06Sticking with David Lynch's Dune for a moment, there was a bit of a miscommunication, if you
04:14like, when Patrick Stewart was cast in the role of Gurney Halleck. He was quite a late addition
04:19to the cast, and it was a performance, Trevor Nunn's 1982 Royal Shakespeare Company production
04:28of Henry IV, in which Patrick Stewart played the king, that brought him to the Twin Peaks
04:33director's eyes. When Patrick Stewart then appeared on set and was getting into makeup,
04:39he found the director to be very quiet and standoffish. It actually developed to the point
04:44where the director didn't interact with him directly, and any time he would need to communicate
04:49something to Stewart, he would do so in a way where he addressed the entire cast. This, frankly,
04:55unpleasant situation would only really be understood when Stewart would later be having
05:01dinner with Raffaella De Laurentiis, who explained that David Lynch cast him, effectively thinking
05:09that he wasn't acting that much in Henry IV. So, when a bald Yorkshireman walked in to play the
05:17role of Gurney Halleck, he got a bit of a shock. Number seven, Cue Diana and David.
05:24The revelation that Patrick Stewart stood there with some of Diana Moldauer's lines taped to his
05:29forehead during filming is one of the biggest takeaways of the book from Trekkies. I had never
05:35heard this story before. It's not so much a revelation as a sort of a sadly understood fact
05:40that Diana Moldauer did not have a good time while playing Pulaski in the second season of
05:45The Next Generation. Another thing that I wasn't entirely aware of was that if we skip forward to
05:50the sixth season, episodes Chain of Command, and Patrick Stewart's compatriot, David Warner, was
05:57cast incredibly last minute in the part of Gul Madred, or Gul Madrid, if we are to believe the
06:03audio version. The fact that this had happened so last minute meant, effectively, Warner didn't have
06:08time to learn his lines, and so what we don't see as an audience is all the cue cards that were on
06:15the other side of the camera as he was delivering his lines as the terrifying Gul Madred. Now, the
06:20deliverance that he gives is perhaps a bit unsurprising when you think of both Warner and
06:28Stewart coming up together in the theatres. Warner's star took off while Stewart's was a little bit
06:35slower. He recounts a time when, you know, David Warner is being recognised for movies like The
06:40Omen and, of course, Star Trek's Five and Six, and Stewart would often be asked by people at the end
06:45of a performance going, are you somebody? That's sure to sting a little bit. Number six, Captain by
06:53a Hairpiece's Breath. So this is one of the stories that it's at this stage, this is fairly well known.
06:59The whole Gene Roddenberry didn't want a bald person playing his captain and, you know, people
07:05had to fight for him. So when Patrick Stewart was brought forward for the role, Gene Roddenberry
07:10initially vetoed it. He just wasn't happy, wasn't interested, but perhaps what has become a little
07:18bit blown out of proportion is how vehemently he didn't want Patrick Stewart for the role. He just
07:24didn't really fancy him for it. Despite all the additions and despite negativity, it came down to
07:30Patrick Stewart and one other actor and both producers Robert Justman and Rick Berman were
07:35really lobbying hard for Patrick Stewart to get the role. Patrick Stewart, hearing the feedback
07:41about the hair, sent off for his custom-made wig from the Royal Shakespeare Company and he had it
07:47flown out to LA and he went in and he read the part and, I'm slightly paraphrasing here, but
07:54everyone broke their sh** laughing because he looked ridiculous. He was told to take it off,
08:01the rest is history. What is a nice coda to that story is, again, this is fairly well known, but
08:07as time went on, Gene not only warmed to Patrick Stewart, but when faced with the question
08:14wouldn't we have cured baldness in the future, he would have said we wouldn't care. Number five,
08:20magnetic personality. If one has been paying attention to the internet over the last few years,
08:26one will have loved the friendship that has been on show between Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.
08:34Although Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were aware of each other as their careers were kind of
08:40coming up together, it wasn't until the first X-Men movie that the pair of them actually worked together
08:46and their friendship developed. Stewart recounts that they have a conversation that's been going
08:51for 23 years unbroken, as in the kind of thing where we'll pause it, we'll come back to it then
08:56in a moment, like that's just the sign of friendship, you know? It's so strong in fact that McKellen went
09:02and got himself ordained so that he could perform the ceremony between Patrick Stewart and his wife
09:08Sunny Ozel. This was done during McKellen and Stewart's effectively Beckett tour when they were
09:13doing a double performance of Waiting for Godot and No Man's Land. There are so many pictures as
09:19part of a social media blitz for this that was part of a campaign that they called Go Go and
09:24Dido Do NYC that shows the pair of them in their characters bowler hats and yeah honestly it's like
09:31the cutest thing you can ever see. Fun fact, one of those photos sees them meeting one Leonard Nimoy
09:37hopping out of a car. Number four, Eye of the Steiger. Back in his Yorkshire Murfield days,
09:42Patrick Stewart would make money each week doing delivery runs for local fish and chip shops where
09:47he would add just a modest delivery fee on top of it. He would save this money and put it toward
09:53going to the cinema where sometimes, you know, he would get a little bit of help as being under age
09:59other moviegoers would pick up a ticket for him. One of the films that he returned to again and
10:03again was On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger. He found a lot of things to
10:09identify with with these characters while they were in Brooklyn and he was in Yorkshire. It was
10:14their impoverished backgrounds that he really was able to see himself in. Now in the 1970s,
10:21in Patrick Stewart's debut movie role Hennessy, he would actually work with veteran actor Rod
10:26Steiger and he would celebrate this by putting a gun in Steiger's face. He was part of the script,
10:32I promise. Steiger left a huge impression on Stewart during this because not only was he
10:38excellent at his own craft but he insisted on remaining on set to read his lines off camera
10:45so that Patrick Stewart could get his close-ups with a real performance beside him. Something
10:50Stewart was amazed that someone as, well, frankly important as Steiger would insist on taking place.
10:58The two of them would then go and eat together and Stewart was just bowled over by the kindness
11:04of the man taking the time to sit down and have dinner together. Number three,
11:07jobbing actor. Nowadays Patrick Stewart is a household name. You know him from his performances,
11:12you know him from pictures of him sitting in the bath dressed as a lobster and you know him from
11:16that quadruple take where he was a little bit high. It wasn't always this way. Growing up the
11:20actor was working in theatre but he was getting side jobs like assistant stage manager, he was
11:26working as understudy, he was working in various backstage roles as well and he was then moving on
11:32to both main and minor roles. All of this as much as possible was within the Royal Shakespeare
11:38Company although of course there were side jobs as well. But according to Stewart in the book it
11:42really was the Royal Shakespeare Company that gave him the stability that allowed him to begin his
11:48family and to provide for them as the years would go by. It would also give him enough stability
11:55that as the decades like the 70s and the 80s were done he was able to seek film work as well. A good
12:01deal of the memoir is devoted to these years and you can understand why. They were incredibly
12:07formative. One of the funny quirks actually to come out of all of the theatre work is that his
12:12voice whenever he delivered anything it was already attuned to projecting to fill a theatre
12:18so he had to learn how to speak quietly. Number two. More than a Captain's Holiday. The third
12:25season of Star Trek The Next Generation is mostly remembered for episodes like Yesterday's Enterprise,
12:31the first part of The Best of Both Worlds and things like The Offspring and Sins of the Father
12:35which is a shame because Captain's Holiday is a really fun episode. It's an episode that gives
12:41Picard the opportunity to have a little bit of fun and romance but not in the similar ways that
12:46We'll Always Have Paris or The Measure of a Man had done so with revisiting old flings.
12:51There was unfortunately a little bit of drama as well. You see the episode was being filmed as
12:58Patrick Stewart's first marriage to his then wife Sheila was beginning to wind down. With that
13:05strain came the introduction to certainly Patrick Stewart's personal life of Jennifer Hetrick who
13:11we would know better as the archaeologist Vash. The onscreen chemistry between the two turns out
13:16it wasn't an act because they became a couple for a short period of time and while that frankly
13:21helped to improve the performances it did absolutely nothing to help the rocky marriage
13:27and once his then wife Sheila discovered that there was a third person in the marriage this
13:33led to divorce proceedings. It was also not to last with Hetrick because the pressure of the
13:38intense media attention around them led to that relationship ending so that by the time that
13:44Hetrick would return as Vash for the episode Cupid they were just back to being amicable friends at
13:50this point. Number one. Grampy Rabbit and Professor X. Not necessarily a combination you might think
13:56of but Patrick Stewart according to Making It So is incredibly well acquainted with Brian Blessed.
14:06Years before Blessed would rain down hell with the rest of the winged people in Flash Gordon,
14:11Blessed would meet Patrick Stewart in the eight-day residential drama course in the spring
14:16holidays of 1953. Blessed is four years older than Patrick Stewart and he made a tremendous
14:23impression on the younger actor immediately although the pair of them would only actually
14:27work together once. They would both perform in the BBC's acclaimed I, Claudius with Blessed
14:33playing the Emperor. Stewart would play the conniving Praetorian guard commander Sejanus
14:40if I'm pronouncing that correctly who is killed after four episodes. Still all these years later
14:45Stewart says he's still spotted in the role and it always makes him smile. Folks thanks so much for
14:51following along. This has been a bit of a special one because this is the first I think
14:56autobiography has come out since I've been working here. Thanks so much again Clive to going through
15:01and getting those fun bits but again I do implore you pick up a copy of this. It is worth it.
15:08It is a lot of fun and it's quite bittersweet as well. I think you'll really enjoy it. Folks thank
15:14you so much. You're all awesome. You're all wonderful. I will see you again soon. Remember
15:19you can follow us over on Twitter at Trek Culture. We're on Instagram at Trek Culture YT.
15:23We're on both Blue Sky and TikTok at Trek Culture as well. You can follow myself at seanferrick on
15:28the various socials. You can follow Clive who wrote the original article at S-K-O-S-T. Some
15:35kind of Star Trek so S-K-O-S-T. That's on Twitter as well. You are all awesome. You are wonderful.
15:42Make sure that you live long and prosper. Make it so.