- 1 day ago
A life in Movies and TV is only just the tip of the Stewart memoir mountain.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
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 career
00:12from his birth to on the poverty-stricken streets of the city he was born in up until the writing
00:17of the book. But one thing that does seem to be overlooked is his time behind the camera on Star
00:25Trek. As you'll know he directed several episodes of The Next Generation beginning with in theory
00:31including A Fistful of Datas and going right up to the penultimate episode Pre-emptive Strike. He
00:36doesn't go into detail on those nor too does he go into detail about his time as a producer
00:42on Star Trek Insurrection for example though he does express disappointment with how that film turned
00:49out as well as its follow-up Star Trek Nemesis. We must confess that this is a little disappointing
00:54that he didn't go into detail on these points of his career because if nothing else it would be
00:59lovely to see a sort of retrospective and deep dive on the understanding that he gained from and with
01:07his fellow castmates particularly ones like Jonathan Frakes who would go on to become such a prolific
01:13director as well. Number 10. The early days were challenging to revisit. The early stories of Star Trek
01:21The Next Generation have reached near mythological status so not all of them make it into the book
01:26but some of the stories such as Patrick Stewart trading up to a Honda Prelude while some of the
01:32other cast members were getting their BMWs and Mercedes is actually pretty funny. He does recount
01:37that he stayed away from conventions for the first couple of years of The Next Generation because he felt
01:42it was so important to concentrate on just building up the role with his own performance. In preparation for
01:48writing the memoir he says that he did re-watch the entirety of The Next Generation and perhaps a
01:53little unsurprisingly found such early early episodes as The Naked Now and The One We've
01:59Promised to Stop Discussing as pretty difficult to sit through. He cites the show's fifth and sixth
02:04years as something of a highlight both well I suppose just in terms of directing, writing, acting,
02:10that everything was firing on all cylinders. He does also say that going into the seventh year he felt
02:17that the quality of episodes were not up to what he was used to and he was therefore satisfied that
02:24the next generation came to an end after the seventh year. Number nine, not a pop music maestro.
02:31Before his time in Star Trek he had appeared in David Lynch's version of the movie Dune. Obviously
02:38today we're all thinking of the amazing Denis Villeneuve versions, both the one that's released and the one
02:44that's coming but this was a vision. While on set he had been cast of course as Gurney Halleck and he
02:52got talking to another young Englishman who he found out played bass and Patrick Stewart thought wow
03:01double bass that's really cool. He was technically correct because this young Englishman would play the
03:07double bass in the music video for a fairly popular song that was released in the 80s. I think it goes
03:14every breath you take because once Stewart asked this young musician who then informed him well
03:21actually I was talking about the bass guitar he said oh do you do you play in a group? He said yes I
03:25I play with the police and 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 and said
03:38this is perhaps maybe you just hadn't heard of me that's absolutely fine. The police were pretty popular
03:44at the time. Now while Sting may not have passed much comment on it a lot of the rest of the cast
03:49and crew thought it was absolutely bloody hilarious. Years later Patrick Stewart would make his own album
03:54of music although this one was more of a parody of country and western songs and if you haven't seen the
03:59trailer I beg you right now go and watch it. Number eight getting lynched. Sticking with David Lynch's
04:07Dune for a moment there was there was a bit of a a miscommunication if you like when Patrick Stewart
04:15was cast in the role of Gurney Halleck. He was quite a late addition to the cast and it was a performance
04:21uh Trevor Nunn's 1982 Royal Shakespeare Company performance of or production of Henry IV in which
04:29Patrick Stewart played the king that brought him to the Twin Peaks director's eye. When Patrick Stewart then
04:36appeared on set and was getting into makeup he found the director to be very quiet and standoffish.
04:42It actually developed to the point where the director didn't interact with him directly and any time he would
04:48need to communicate something to Stewart he would do so in a way where he addressed the entire cast.
04:53This frankly unpleasant situation would only really be understood when Stewart would later be having
05:01dinner with Rafaela de Laurentiis who explained that David Lynch cast him effectively thinking that
05:09he wasn't acting that much in Henry IV. So when a bald Yorkshireman walked in to play the role of Gurney
05:17Halleck he got a bit of a shock. Number seven cue Diana and David. The revelation that Patrick Stewart
05:26stood there with some of Diana Moldauer's lines taped to his forehead during filming is one of the biggest
05:32takeaways of the book from Trekkies. I had never heard this story before. It's not so much a revelation
05:38as a sort of a sadly understood fact that Diana Moldauer did not have a good time while playing Pulaski in the
05:44second season of The Next Generation. Another thing that I wasn't entirely aware of was that if we
05:50skip forward to the sixth season episodes Chain of Command and Patrick Stewart's compatriot David
05:56Warner was cast incredibly last minute in the part of Gul Madred or Gul Madred if we are to believe
06:03the audio 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 the
06:15other side of the camera as he was delivering his lines as the terrifying Gul Madred. Now the deliverance
06:22that he gives is perhaps a bit unsurprising when you think of both Warner and Stewart coming up together
06:29in the theatres. Warner's star talk off while Stewart's was a little bit slower. He recounts a time when,
06:37you know, David Warner is being recognized for movies like The Omen and of course Star Trek's 5
06:42and 6 and Stewart would often be asked by people at the end of a performance going,
06:46are you somebody? That's sure to sting a little bit. Number six, Captain by a hairpiece's breath.
06:55So this is one of the stories that it's at this stage this is fairly well known. The whole Gene Roddenberry
07:01didn't want a bald person playing his captain and you know people had to fight for him. So
07:07when Patrick Stewart was brought forward for the role Gene Roddenberry initially
07:12vetoed it. He just wasn't happy, wasn't interested but perhaps what has become a little bit blown out
07:18of proportion is how vehemently he didn't want Patrick Stewart for the role. He just didn't really fancy
07:26him for it. Despite all the additions and despite negativity it came down to Patrick Stewart and one
07:31other actor and both producers Robert Justman and Rick Berman were really lobbying hard for Patrick
07:37Stewart to get the role. Patrick Stewart, hearing the feedback about the hair, sent off for his custom
07:44made wig from the Royal Shakespeare Company and he had it flown out to LA and he went in and he read the
07:50part and I'm slightly paraphrasing here but everyone broke their laughing because he looked ridiculous.
07:59He was told to take it off, the rest is history. What is a nice coda to that story is again this is
08:06fairly well known but as time went on Gene not only warmed to Patrick Stewart but when faced with the
08:12question wouldn't we have cured baldness in the future he would 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
08:46together and their friendship developed. Stewart recounts that they have a conversation that's
08:51been going for 23 years unbroken as in the kind of thing where we'll pause it we'll come back to it
08:56then in a moment like that's just the sign of friendship you know. It's so strong in fact that McKellen
09:01went and got himself ordained so that he could perform the ceremony between Patrick Stewart and his
09:07wife Sonny Ozell. This was done during McKellen and Stewart's effectively Beckett tour when they
09:13were doing a double performance of Waiting for Godot and No Man's Land. There are so many pictures
09:19as part of a social media blitz for this that was part of a campaign that they called Gogo and Dido
09:25do NYC that shows the pair of them in their character's bowler hats and yeah honestly it's like
09:31the cutest thing you could 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 Patrick
09:42Stewart would make money each week doing delivery ones for local fish and ship shops where he would
09:47add just a modest delivery fee on top of it. He would save this money and put it toward going to the
09:54cinema where sometimes you know he would get a little bit of help. As being under age other moviegoers
10:00would pick up a ticket for him. One of the films that he returned to again and again was On the
10:04Waterfront starring Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger. He found a lot of things to identify with with these
10:11characters while they were in Brooklyn and he was in Yorkshire it was their impoverished backgrounds that
10:16he really was able to see himself in. Now in the 1970s in Patrick Stewart's debut movie role Hennessy
10:24he would actually work with veteran actor Rod Steiger and he would celebrate this by putting a gun in
10:30Steiger's face. He was part of the script I promise. Steiger left a huge impression on Stewart during
10:35this because not only was he excellent at his own craft but he insisted on remaining on set to read
10:43his lines off camera so that Patrick Stewart could get his close-ups with a real performance beside him.
10:50Something Stewart was amazed that someone as 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 of
11:04the man taking the time to sit down and have dinner together. Number three, jobbing actor. Nowadays
11:09Patrick Stewart is a household name. You know him from his performances, you know him from pictures of
11:13him sitting in the bath dressed as a lobster and you know him from that quadruple take where he was a
11:17little bit high. It wasn't always this way. Growing up the actor was working in theatre but he was getting
11:22side jobs like assistant stage manager, he was working as understudy, he was working in various
11:29backstage roles as well and he was then moving on to both main and minor roles. All of this as much as
11:36possible was within the Royal Shakespeare Company although of course there were side jobs as well.
11:40But according to Stewart in the book it really was the Royal Shakespeare Company that gave him the
11:45stability that allowed him to begin his family and to provide for them as the years would go by. It
11:53would also give him enough stability that as the decades like the 70s and the 80s were done he was
11:58able to seek film work as well. A good deal of the memoir is devoted to these years and you can understand
12:06why. They were incredibly formative. One of the funny quirks actually to come out of all of the theatre
12:11work is that his voice whenever he delivered anything it was already attuned to projecting
12:17to fill a theatre so he had to learn how to speak quietly. Number two, more than a Captain's Holiday.
12:24The third season of Star Trek The Next Generation is mostly remembered for episodes like Yesterday's
12:30Enterprise, the first part of the best of both worlds and things like The Osprey and Sins of the
12:35Father which is a shame because Captain's Holiday is a really fun episode. It's an episode that
12:40gives Picard 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 strain
13:06came the introduction to certainly Patrick Stewart's personal life of Jennifer Hetrick who we would know
13:12better as the archaeologist Vash. The on-screen chemistry between the two turns out it wasn't an
13:16act because they became a couple for a short period of time and while that frankly helped to improve
13:22the performances it did absolutely nothing to help the rocky marriage and once his then wife Sheila
13:29discovered that there was a third person in the marriage this led to divorce proceedings. It was also
13:35not to last with Hetrick because the pressure of the intense media attention around them led to
13:41that relationship ending so that by the time that Hetrick would return as Vash for the episode Cupid
13:47they were just back to being amicable friends at this point. Number one Grampy Rabbit and Professor X
13:55Not necessarily a combination you might think of but Patrick Stewart according to making it so
14:00is incredibly well acquainted with Brian Blessed. Years before Blessed would rain down hell with the
14:09rest of the winged people in Flash Gordon Blessed would meet Patrick Stewart in the eight-day residential
14:15drama course in the spring holidays of 1953. Blessed is four years older than Patrick Stewart and he made
14:22a tremendous impression on the younger actor immediately although the pair of them would only actually work
14:27together once. They would both perform in the BBC's acclaimed I Claudius with Blessed playing the
14:34Emperor. Stewart would play the conniving Praetorian guard commander Sejanus if I'm pronouncing that
14:41correctly who is killed after four episodes. Still all these years later Stewart says he's still spotted in
14:47the role and it always makes him smile. Folks thanks so much for following along um this has been a bit of a
14:53special one because this is this is the first I think autobiography has come out since I've been
14:58working here uh thanks so much again Clive to going through and getting those fun bits but again I do
15:04I do implore you pick up a copy of this uh it is worth it it is a lot of fun and it's quite bittersweet
15:11as well I think you'll really enjoy it folks thank you so much you're all awesome you're all wonderful I
15:17will see you again soon remember you can follow us over on twitter at trekculture we're on instagram at
15:22trekcultureyt we're on both blue sky and tiktok at trekculture as well you can follow myself at
15:27seanferrick on the various socials you can follow Clive who wrote the original article at s-k-o-s-t
15:35some kind of star trek so s-k-o-s-t that's on twitter as well you're all awesome you are wonderful
15:42make sure that you live long and prosper make it so
15:47you
Recommended
11:38
|
Up next
11:24
6:12
3:36
2:20
1:44
1:22
11:06
12:57
24:52
15:48
10:38
14:28
12:07
13:38
10:43
11:46
Be the first to comment