Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry Left A Bad First Impression On Patrick Stewart
"Star Trek: The Next Generation," initially an object of skepticism, has grown to become just as iconic as its predecessor. The show lived up to its name, bringing in a new wave of fans who embraced the new crew of the USS Enterprise and its captain, the highly diplomatic, morally centered Jean-Luc Picard, played by the thespian Patrick Stewart. Despite how immortal the role has become, Stewart barely even knew what "Star Trek" was before signing on to the series, and he wasn't too fond of creator and "Trek" architect Gene Roddenberry when the two first met.
Like Picard himself, Stewart is an avid fan of Shakespeare and classical theater, performing for more than 15 years for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Although Stewart had a predilection for classical theater, the science-fiction genre, including "Star Trek," didn't hold any interest for him. "It was a style of work I never associated with, or even particularly watched when I was younger," he recently told the LA Times. The only memories he has of the original series is seeing his children watching a show in the background that featured "these guys wearing different color T-shirts," as he described it. Still, the fact that "TNG" was on camera and shot in Hollywood piqued his interest, and the Shakespeare actor accepted the role, ironically cementing his status in geek history.
Jean who?
Patrick Stewart wasn't even sure who Gene Roddenberry was upon learning that the creator of "Star Trek" wanted to speak with him. "Jean who? I don't know her," he recalled saying to his agent. He caught the attention of those working on "TNG" at a public lecture and reading at UCLA, where he unexpectedly picked up his aforementioned agent, who set him up with an appointment with Roddenberry. According to Stewart in his LA Times interview:
"...I went to Gene Roddenberry's house and was greeted at the door by this man, Robert Justman, who had been at the university [UCLA] the previous night and had called Gene Roddenberry and said, 'I think we found an actor we've got to have in the show.' When I arrived, there were two other men there, besides Gene and Robert, and nobody asked me sit down. We talked for about 10 minutes standing up, and then Gene said, 'Thanks for coming over,' and goodbye. And I was back on the street, and I thought, 'Bloody hell, what the heck was that about?'"
Stewart's agent let him know that despite the curt conversation, Roddenberry and the other people in the room wanted to move forward. Not everyone was on board with Captain Picard at the beginning of the show, either. When the show first premiered back in 1987, Tom Sales of the Washington Post expressed that Stewart was a "grim bald crank who would make a better villain." Over time, however, and importantly even after Roddenberry's death, the sequel series proved to not only live up to the legacy of the original "Trek," but take on a confidently unique personality of its own, largely in part because of Stewart's magnetic performance.