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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 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 it
01:42was 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
01:53a little unsurprisingly found such early early episodes as The Naked Now and The One We've Promised
01:59to Stop Discussing as pretty difficult to sit through. He cites the show's fifth and sixth years as
02:05something of a highlight both well I suppose just in terms of directing, writing, acting, that everything
02:11was firing on all cylinders. He does also say that going into the seventh year he felt that the quality
02:18of episodes were not up to what he was used to and he was therefore satisfied that The Next Generation
02:25came to an end after the seventh year. Number nine. Not a pop music maestro. Before his time in Star
02:33Trek he had
02:34appeared in David Lynch's version of the movie Dune. Obviously today we're all thinking of the amazing
02:41Denis Villeneuve versions uh both the one that's released and the one that's coming but this was
02:47a vision. While on set he had been cast of course as Gurney Halleck and he got talking to another
02:54young
02:55Englishman uh who 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 music
03:09video for a fairly popular song that was released in the 80s. I think it goes every breath you take
03:16because once Stewart asked this young musician who then informed him well actually I was talking about
03:21the bass guitar he said oh do you do you play in a group he said yes I I play
03:25with the police and he says
03:27you play in the police band? Basically Patrick Stewart hadn't a clue who Sting was and this became
03:33a riot on set. Sting apparently was very gregarious about it and said this is perhaps maybe you just
03:40hadn't heard of me that's absolutely fine uh the police were pretty popular at the time. Now while
03:45Sting may not have passed much comment on it a lot of the rest of the cast and crew thought
03:49it was
03:49absolutely bloody hilarious. Years later Patrick Stewart would make his own album of music although
03:55this one was more of a parody of country and western songs and if you haven't seen the trailer I
04:00beg you
04:00right now go and watch it. Number eight getting lynched. Sticking with David Lynch's Dune for a moment
04:09there was there was a bit of a a miscommunication if you like when Patrick Stewart was cast in the
04:16role of
04:16Gurney Halleck. He was quite a late addition to the cast and it was a performance uh Trevor Nunn's
04:231982 Royal Shakespeare Company performance of or production of Henry the fourth in which Patrick
04:29Stewart played the king that brought him to the Twin Peaks director's eyes. 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
04:47any time he would need to communicate something to Stewart he would do so in a way where he addressed
04:52the entire cast. This frankly unpleasant situation would only really be understood when Stewart would
05:00later be having dinner with Rafaela de Laurentiis who explained that David Lynch cast him effectively
05:08thinking that he wasn't acting that much in Henry the fourth so when a bald Yorkshireman walked in
05:16to play the role of Gurney Halleck he got a bit of a shock. Number seven cue Diana and David.
05:23The revelation that Patrick Stewart stood there with some of Diana Maldara's lines taped to his forehead
05:30during filming is one of the biggest takeaways of the book from Trekkies. I had never heard this story before.
05:36It's not so much a revelation as a sort of a sadly understood fact that Diana Maldara did not have
05:42a good time while playing Pulaski in the second season of The Next Generation. Another thing that
05:47I wasn't entirely aware of was that if we skip forward to the sixth season episode's chain of command
05:53and Patrick Stewart's compatriot David Warner was cast incredibly last minute in the part of
06:00Gul Madred or Gul Madred if we are to believe the audio version. The fact that this had happened so
06:06last
06:06minute meant effectively Warner didn't have time to learn his lines and so what we don't see as an
06:12audience is all the cue cards that were on the other side of the camera as he was delivering his
06:18lines as the terrifying Gul Madred. Now the deliverance that he gives is perhaps a bit unsurprising
06:25when you think of both Warner and Stewart coming up together in the theaters. Warner's star talk off
06:33while Stewart's was a little bit slower. He recounts a time when you know David Warner is being recognized
06:39for movies like The Omen and of course Star Trek's five and six and Stewart would often be asked by
06:44people at the end of a performance going, are you somebody? That's sure to sting a little bit.
06:51Number six. Captain by a hairpiece's breath. So this is one of the stories that it's at this stage this
06:58is
06:58fairly well known. The whole Gene Roddenberry didn't want a bald person playing his captain
07:04and you know people had to fight for him. So when Patrick Stewart was brought forward for the role
07:10Gene Roddenberry initially vetoed it. He just wasn't happy, wasn't interested but perhaps what has become a
07:18little bit 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 really
07:35lobbying hard for Patrick Stewart to get the role. Patrick Stewart hearing the feedback about the hair
07:42sent off for his custom-made wig from the Royal Shakespeare Company and he had it flown out to LA
07:48and he went in and he read the part and I'm slightly paraphrasing here but everyone broke their
07:56laughing because he looked ridiculous. He was told to take it off, the rest is history. What is a nice
08:03coda to that story is again this is fairly well known but as time went on Gene not only warmed
08:10to
08:10Patrick Stewart but when faced with the question wouldn't we have cured baldness in the future he
08:17would said we wouldn't care. Number five magnetic personality. If one has been paying attention to
08:25the internet over the last few years one will have loved the friendship that has been on show between
08:31Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Although Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were aware of each other as their
08:38careers were kind of coming up together it wasn't until the first X-Men movie that the pair of them
08:45actually worked together and their friendship developed. Stewart recounts that they have a
08:50conversation that's been going for 23 years unbroken as in the kind of thing where we'll pause it we'll
08:55come back to it then in a moment like that's just the sign of friendship you know. It's so strong
09:00in fact
09:00that McKellen went 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 were
09:14doing a double performance of Waiting for Godot and No Man's Land. There are so many pictures as part of
09:19a social media blitz for this that was part of a campaign that they called Gogo and Dido do NYC
09:26that
09:26shows the pair of them in their characters bowler hats and yeah honestly it's like the cutest thing you
09:32could ever see. Fun fact one of those photos sees them meeting one Leonard Nimoy hopping out of a car.
09:39Number four Eye of the Steiger. Back in his Yorkshire Murfield days Patrick Stewart would make money each
09:44week doing delivery ones for local fish and ship shops where he would add just a modest delivery fee
09:49on top of it. He would save this money and put it toward going to the cinema where sometimes you
09:56know
09:56he would get a little bit of help. As being under age other moviegoers would pick up a ticket for
10:01him.
10:01One of the films that he returned to again and again was On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando
10:06and Rod Steiger. He found a lot of things to identify with with these characters while they
10:12were in Brooklyn and he was in Yorkshire it was their impoverished backgrounds that he really was
10:17able to see himself in. Now in the 1970s in Patrick Stewart's debut movie role Hennessy he would
10:24actually work with veteran actor Rod Steiger and he would celebrate this by putting a gun in Steiger's
10:30face. He was part of the script I promise. Steiger left a huge impression on Stewart during this
10:35because not only was he excellent at his own craft but he insisted on remaining on set to read his
10:43lines
10:44off 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
11:03of the man taking the time to sit down and have dinner together.
11:07Number three, jobbing actor. Nowadays Patrick Stewart is a household name. You know him from
11:11his performances, you know him from pictures of him sitting in the bath dressed as a lobster
11:15and you know him from that quadruple take where he was a little bit high.
11:18It wasn't always this way. Growing up the actor was working in theatre but he was getting side jobs like
11:24assistant stage manager, he was working as understudy, he was working in various backstage roles as well
11:30and he was then moving on to both main and minor roles. All of this as much as possible was
11:37within
11:37the Royal Shakespeare Company although of course there were side jobs as well. But according to Stewart in
11:42the book it really was the Royal Shakespeare Company that gave him the stability that allowed him to
11:47begin his family and to provide for them as the years would go by. It would also give him enough
11:54stability that as the decades like the 70s and the 80s were done he was able to seek film work
12:00as well.
12:01A good deal 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 voice
12:12whenever he delivered anything it was already attuned to projecting to fill a theatre so you
12:19had to learn how to speak quietly. Number two, more than a Captain's Holiday. The third season of Star
12:26Trek The Next Generation is mostly remembered for episodes like Yesterday's Enterprise, the first part of
12:32The Best of Both Worlds and things like The Osprey and Sins of the Father which is a shame because
12:36Captain's Holiday is a really fun episode. It's an episode that gives Picard the opportunity to have
12:43a little bit of fun and romance but not in the similar ways that we'll always have Paris or the
12:48measure of a man had done so with revisiting old flings. There was unfortunately a little bit of
12:54drama as well. You see the episode was being filmed as Patrick Stewart's first marriage to his then wife
13:00Sheila was beginning to wind down. With that strain came the introduction to certainly Patrick Stewart's
13:09personal life of Jennifer Hetrick who we would know better as the archaeologist Vash. The on-screen
13:14chemistry between the two turns out it wasn't an act because they became a couple for a short period
13:19of time and while that frankly helped to improve the performances it did absolutely nothing to help the
13:26rocky marriage and once his then wife Sheila discovered that there was a third person in the
13:31marriage this led to divorce proceedings. It was also not to last with Hetrick because the
13:37pressure of the intense media attention around them led to that relationship ending so that by the time
13:43that Hetrick 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 of
13:57but 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 8 day residential drama course in the spring holidays of 1953.
14:18Blessed is four years older than Patrick Stewart and he made a tremendous impression on the younger actor
14:24immediately although the pair of them would only actually work together once. They would both perform
14:30in the BBC's acclaimed I, Claudius with Blessed playing the Emperor. Stewart would play the conniving
14:37Praetorian guard commander Sejanus, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, who is killed after four episodes.
14:43Still, all these years later, Stewart says he's still spotted in the role and it always makes him smile.
14:49Folks, thanks so much for following along. Um, this has been a bit of a special one because this is,
14:55this is the first I think autobiography has come out since I've been working here. Uh, thanks so much
15:00again Clive to going through and getting those fun bits but again I do, I do implore you pick up
15:05a copy of
15:06this. Uh, it is worth it, it is a lot of fun and it's quite bittersweet as well. I think
15:12you'll really
15:13enjoy it. Folks, thank you so much, you're all awesome, you're all wonderful, I will see you again
15:18soon. Remember you can follow us over on Twitter at TrekCulture, we're on Instagram at TrekCultureYT,
15:23we're on both Blue Sky and TikTok at TrekCulture as well. You can follow myself at Sean Ferrick on the
15:28various socials, you can follow Clive who wrote the original article at S-K-O-S-T, some kind of
15:36Star
15:36Trek, so S-K-O-S-T, that's on Twitter as well. You're all awesome, you are wonderful, make sure
15:43that you
15:43live long and prosper. Make it so.
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