One Star Trek Director Proved To Be Patrick Stewart's Guardian Angel
Patrick Stewart's audition process for "Star Trek: The Next Generation" involved a lot of excitement, a lot of uncertainty, and many, many flights from LAX to Heathrow and back again.
In his new autobiography "Making It So: A Memoir," Stewart remembered his jet lag well. His audition was a whirlwind of activity. Stewart recalls reading script pages in front of a slew of Paramount executives and in front of creator Gene Roddenberry ("who did not address me at all"), learning later that he was reading the lines for Q, the impish trickster deity that actor John De Lancie would eventually play. After reading for Q, Stewart was called back to read for a character that was, at the time, just called "captain." Things were getting more intriguing by the day for the then-out-of-work actor.
Then, once the good news of his hiring came through, his preparation for the role became a somewhat fraught experience. Stewart crashed with a friend who lived in Brentwood while dramas began to appear at Paramount. Some of the producers, it seems, were concerned that Patrick Stewart was bald, and they asked him if he had a hairpiece he could wear. Luckily, he did. He called it his "audition wig," and he used it to calm casting agents who panic at the sight of a bald head. Stewart was amused that his hairpiece, which was shipped overnight, got better flight accommodations than he did.
During the audition process, Stewart credits one person for being an invaluable guide into the hairy world of "Star Trek." It seems that director Corey Allen, the man who would direct "Encounter at Farpoint," the pilot episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," contacted the actor and asked to go over a script together.
This unauthorized meeting helped immensely.
Corey Allen
Stewart recalls:
"One more novel twist to the whole experience: On that same Sunday; I was contacted [...] by Corey Allen, who explained that he was the director of the new 'Star Trek' show's pilot episode. He admitted that he was operating outside the chain of command, and that his call was unauthorized by the higher-ups in the production, but he wanted to know if I was interested in meeting up with him ahead of the audition, at eight a.m. the following day, so that the two of us could read the script together. I told him that it sounded like a splendid idea."
Stewart went to the Paramount lot for the meeting but wasn't allowed to park on the lot, needing to find parking on a side street. Los Angeles denizens know how notoriously horrible parking is on Melrose right around the Paramount lot, so this was a horrendous damnation for the actor. He did eventually make his way in with the aid of a mysterious visitor in the car behind him, passed through security, and sought Mr. Allen. He continued:
"I found my way to Corey Allen's 'office,' which was actually one outhouse temporary cabin-like trailers you sometimes see on studio lots. He had a pot of coffee waiting, and we got right into the reading. Corey was a gentlemanly fellow in his fifties and an excellent dialogue coach. He gave me numerous helpful notes, particularly the advice that I should dial down the size of my voice, making it more conversational. Having mostly done theater and epic-style movies, I was used to speaking in stentorian tones, so this was something that I really needed to understand."
From this meeting, Stewart was able to infer that he was the front-runner for the coveted, as-yet-unnamed role.
The secret meeting
The meeting between Stewart and Allen was, Allen stressed, to be kept entirely secret. Stewart figures this was just the way Hollywood operated, although it seems clear now that Allen wanted Stewart to play Captain Picard and chose to give him an inside track. "After forty-five minutes of dialogue work," Stewart wrote, "we headed out to the 'Star Trek' production offices. Corey advised me that if we ran into anyone else on the way in, we should simply say that we met in the street."
Stewart was outfitted with his hairpiece and led to the inner sanctum where his final, final audition was to be held in earnest. He was led into a room of executives and handed pages. To further guide Stewart through the process, Allen suggested reading opposite the actor. It seems that Allen was once an actor himself, and Stewart, at that moment, finally recognized him. He wrote:
"There were three executives and a couple of people from casting, one of whom said she would be reading with me. At this, Corey, who'd been silent until that point, piped up and said, 'Would you mind if I read with Patrick? I think that, being an actor myself, it would be helpful.' Ah, Corey had been an actor, that was it! Later on, I worked out why his name seemed familiar: I had seen him as Buzz Gunderson, the thug who challenges James Dean to a car race and plunges to his death in 'Rebel Without a Cause.' Now he was an in-demand, Emmy-winning TV director."
The audition went well, and Allen even gave him some notes during the reading. It seemed Allen's secret moments of prep were vital, as Stewart got the role.
The execs also thought he looked fine without a hairpiece.