Patrick Stewart: Why I Stormed Off the Set of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’
In an exclusive excerpt from his new autobiography, 'Making It So,' the actor reveals a time when he got quite upset with his castmates at 'TNG' during the show's first season.
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“I could be a severe bastard,” he writes. “My experiences at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre had been intense and serious … On the TNG set, I grew angry with the conduct of my peers, and that’s when I called that meeting in which I lectured the cast for goofing off and responded to Denise Crosby’s, ‘We’ve got to have some fun sometimes, Patrick’ comment by saying, ‘We are not here, Denise, to have fun.'”
“In retrospect,” Stewart continues, “everyone, me included, finds this story hilarious. But in the moment, when the cast erupted in hysterics at my pompous declaration, I didn’t handle it well. I didn’t enjoy being laughed at. I stormed off the set and into my trailer, slamming the door.”
Stewart then details how Frakes and Spiner came to his trailer for a heart-to-heart chat.
“People respect you,” Spiner told him. “But I think you misjudged the situation here.”
Recalls Stewart: “He and Jonathan acknowledged that yes, there was too much goofing around and that it needed to be dialed back. But they also made it clear how off-putting it was — and not a case study in good leadership — for me to try to resolve the matter by lecturing and scolding the cast. I had failed to read the room, imposing RSC behavior on people accustomed to the ways of episodic television — which was, after all, what we were shooting.”
In short, he became angry because he was used to theater acting and tried to hold a tv production to theater’s standards.
he actually learns how to be a captain while playing the role, that's so awesome.. he gets a lecture from Number One and his Science Operations Officer on human behavior, it's just hilarious and beautiful, i'm dying here..
You're right it is beautiful! Not to be that guy though, but Data is Ops, not Science.
no, you're absolutely right, well noted.. i was having a moment haha..
All good friend! I'm just too much of a Trek nerd to not correct it. It's an easy mistake to make too, seeing as Data handles a lot of the science related stuff on the show and the Enterprise-D is notably lacking a Chief Science Officer. Behind the scenes Data was originally going to be in Sciences, but the producers didn't like the way a blue uniform looked with his skin so they made him Ops.
that is awesome my friend, thank you.. you know i may have watched nearly every episode of that show, and not really been sure about his job, haha.. but i just naturally equate him with Spock, when i think about his relationship to the Captain character.. and the fact that Spiner's character is the one learning human emotions from square one makes the whole real world episode with Stewart (the ACADEMY man, for God's sake) even better..
I wonder if Frakes was doing the Riker pose while lecturing him.
He probably swung a chair around and mounted it backwards.
haha a little Good Cop / Bad Cop maybe, that would have been perfect
There's interviews with Frakes where he talks about stepping into the director's role for a few episodes and quickly realizing that it was very difficult to do when the cast would goof off up until the word ACTION gets called.
So Stewart probably had a point, especially from production's view.
Neat.
Incidentally, Jonathan Frakes now directs fantastic episodes of television.
Many science fiction shows have had Jonathan Frakes direct just an episode or two, and they usually end up being favorites.
In short, he became angry because he was used to theater acting and tried to hold a tv production to theater’s standards.
It seems like a perfectly human mistake and an experience from which he learned.
Yes. If he carried a grudge for years, that would make him a pompous ass. This, on the other hand, just sounds like someone making the adjustment to television acting from a stage career.
I like that his fellow cast members felt like they could talk to him about it. That alone says quite a bit.