Star Trek: Wrath Of Khan's Director Had A Simple Trick For Dealing With William Shatner's Ego

When Nicholas Meyer was brought on to direct "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," he brought to the franchise a necessary degree of irreverence. He'd never seen an episode of the series, but immediately saw potential in playing the conflict between the Captain James T. Kirk-helmed USS Enterprise and the Khan Noonien Singh-commandeered USS Reliant as a grand Naval battle. Imbuing Gene Roddenberry's creation with the seafaring spirit of a classic swashbuckler yarn like "Captain Blood" or "The Crimson Pirate" proved to be a masterstroke series — and, evidently, easier to pull off than getting a decent performance out of Shatner.

To be fair, William Shatner is not a terrible actor. He impressed his peers during his time at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada (one of those being Christopher Plummer), and was excellent in Roger Corman's racially charged 1962 drama "The Intruder." But once he became a television star via "Star Trek," he became a rigid, predictable performer. His histrionics felt studied and played as camp. Kirk was a fascinating character, primarily due to his raging ego and considerable (if pissy) intellect, but that shtick needed shading.

Basically, Meyer needed to find out if Shatner had a second note when he was playing Kirk. He did. Getting him there, however, required driving him into intense boredom. 

During a panel discussion arranged by sci-fi writer-producer Marc Zicree (aka Mr. Sci-Fi), Meyer discussed that the key to getting genuine emotion out of Shatner as Kirk was wearing him down. Per Meyer:

"One of the things I found out working with William Shatner on 'Star Trek,' is that he was always sort of striking attitudes. He'd gotten into all these habits on Captain Kirk, and I thought 'How do I bust through that.' I realized that if I tackled that head-on he would become very, very defensive ... but I did understand that he got better when he stopped doing that. How to stop him from doing that was getting him to be bored with what he was doing. And when he was bored he let down his guard, and other things came to the fore because he wasn't posturing."

Shatner is phenomenal in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," particularly in his final scene with Spock and in the denouement with the crew, where Kirk confesses, "I feel young." If that wonderful reaction emerged from the depths of boredom, then Shatner needs to be bored more often. Because he's never been better in front of a camera.