When Patrick Stewart was first offered the role of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in a “Star Trek” adventure, he had no clue what that was. He had to ask his children.
“I got this famous call from my agent, whom I had never met, who said, ‘I've got two questions for you, Patrick. What were you doing at UCLA last night? And why should Gene Roddenberry want to see you this morning?’ That was the beginning of it,” he recalls.
“And then I had to turn to my kids ... and say, ‘Kids, kids. I think you watch “Star Trek.” Tell me about it. What was it? Did you like it? Was it any good at all?’ And, of course, they raved about it.
“And I remembered coming home after matinees from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre just in time to be able to give my kids their supper and read to them and put them to bed before going back to do an evening performance. And I would find that they were watching this thing on television with these guys in colored T‑shirts. And that's all I remember,” he says.
“I knew nothing about it, and I did not even recall the name Gene Roddenberry (“Star Trek’s” creator.) So I had a lot to catch up on. But as time went by, I began to see that ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ cast, crew, producers, writers, directors, were creating an expansion of Gene's world. And that has continued until today.”
It was 1987 when Stewart first slipped into Picard’s tights and seized command of the USS Enterprise. And starting Feb. 16 he’s back at it on Paramount+. “Star Trek: Picard” returns for its third and final season complete with the crew from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” including LaVar Burton as Geordi La Forge, Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher, Jonathan Frakes as William Riker, Brent Spiner as Data, Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi and Michael Dorn as Worf. Returning from previous “Picard’s” are Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine and Michelle Hurd as Raffi Musiker.
Stewart wasn’t sure that he wanted to return to the character for this final season. “The most important thing for me was that it should not just simply look like a three-series reunion, because that would just simply be stepping back,” he says.
“And what excited me about starting work on ‘Picard’ was that ... I had lived nearly 35 years since I first put on the captain's uniform. And there is no doubt that in that time, the world has changed. But I have changed too. I'm not the same person that I was then. If I were, they would never have cast me.
“And I wanted the series to show the impact of those years that had passed and how much one might change — and whether fears become greater or less. Right now, about the condition of the world, my fears are high and full of anxiety. So I wanted that to be incorporated.”
Fears and anxieties of today may be part of the substructure of Season 3, but the series remains true to the original “Star Trek” ethos, says executive producer Alex Kurtzman. “Changing it doesn't mean changing the essential nature of what ‘Trek’ is,” he says. “So for us, that's always about Roddenberry's vision of optimism. It doesn't mean you can't go into dark places. It just means that optimism is the core tenet of ‘Star Trek.’
“I always personally feel like canon is a wonderful thing. You have to respect it, but in order to grow it, you have to make changes. You have to explore the gray areas the canon has maybe hinted at, but not fully explored. And that is very exciting.”
Stewart, 82, says he doesn’t mind portraying an aging Picard. “Actors' lives are unusual. Sometimes I feel that it is little different than a 5-year-old’s playroom, what we do. And other times what we do is perhaps a little more grown-up and a little more serious. But we are essentially always examining the inside of ourselves. We ask questions not only about the character, but what's in here,” he says, pointing to his heart.
“Acting is the only way I’ve discovered to fully express myself. Perhaps if I weren’t an actor I’d be a teacher. As a very inarticulate teenager, I found that acting gave me an opportunity to say things about myself, about the world, and about my life which I know I could not have said myself. I know that now. At the time, I was just having fun. It was a legitimate reason to go out in the evening, be out of the house — I was rehearsing a play. And it was no coincidence that some of the prettiest girls I knew were also amateur actresses,” he says.
Stewart credits the positive values of the “Star Trek” saga for its success. “I changed my views about how we should continue ‘Picard’ into Season 2 and 3 because I saw how effective Season 1 was. And that it was largely effective, I felt, because of its examination of the nature of change, of growth.
“And growth — whether it's up or down — that is the world that we live in. And may he rest in peace, that is, ever since Gene first created the essential elements of what ‘Star Trek’ is, because they (those values) remain. We respect them. We hold on to them and continue to pursue them because I believe and I think I'm surrounded by people who believe the same thing, our world needs them.”
Actress gives birth to new comedy
Gina Rodriguez may be nine months pregnant, but she’s also starring in ABC’s new comedy, “Not Dead Yet,” which sees the light of day on Wednesday. The “Jane the Virgin” star plays a woman starting over who snags a job as an obituary writer for a local newspaper. The shtick is that she actually sees the dead people she writes about.
As of press time there has been no blessed event yet, and Rodriguez reveals there was a double reason she wanted to do the show. “I have always felt like my ancestors have been around me, have been with me, have been present in my journey and taking care of me in those moments of fear or doubt,” she says.
“And so, when I read this script, I was immediately attracted to this idea that when people pass, when they transition, that they can come back and give you elements of knowledge that you wish you had or that you needed in the moment ... There's this idea that we can learn from our ancestors and the people that have gone before us, whether they're there in a feeling or they're there with the knowledge they gave you when they were in the flesh,” she says.
“My grandmother passed this summer, and my mother's been going through her experience of grief. And since my grandmother passed, I have never felt her presence more than I ever have in my life, through this experience,” she says, pointing to her stomach.
“And I had an awesome spiritual baby shower, and my mom was very sad that my grandmother wasn't there. ‘She's supposed to be here,’ she kept saying. And I'm, like, ‘But she is. But she totally is.’”
Actors peddle the goods
Actor Billy Crudup divines a parallel between what he does for a living and the salesman he plays in “Hello, Tomorrow!” which premieres on AppleTV+ Feb. 17. It’s the tale of a retro-future world where salesmen are touting lunar timeshares and flogging a little hope along the way.
“I spend every day of work putting on somebody else’s clothes and inhabiting their feelings in the hope to fool you all,” he says
“You feel a little smarmy doing that sometimes. It is a natural reaction for actors in general to know that what they’re doing is trying to pull a hoax in the hopes that we can transport you for a moment for a small fee, maybe $10 at the theater — $6.99 a month (for AppleTV+).
“But the idea is obviously we’re going to put on a ruse for you so that you can be transported. And there is some proximity there. You don’t get into this business and you don’t get into the sales business if at the core you don’t think you’re going to try to help people. Sometimes what happens is people have overestimated their own abilities at processing what will protect people. And in fact, they’re not actually helping people. And that does happen ... You’re doing a play that’s not working so well. You’re not helping the audience very much, but this happens to salespeople as well, I think.”
Billy Bob Thornton portrays the bad guy
Billy Bob Thornton is always arresting, no matter what he portrays. But he’s also a writer and first glommed onto the spotlight when he wrote, directed and starred in the little independent “Sling Blade” back in 1996.
His touching portrait of the alcoholic ex-lawyer on Prime Video’s “Goliath” was a treasure. Now he’s back playing the bad guy in the movie “Devil’s Peak,” opening in theaters Feb. 17 (on demand Feb. 24). This time he’s a crime lord who ruthlessly dominates his family.
He may switch from bad guy to good guy, but in Thornton’s very first role he played his namesake. “The first play I did was in the third grade,” he says. “We did the story of ‘The Three Billy Goat Gruffs.’ I was the middle billy goat. I think from then on, I was an actor. I was in the school play, but I didn’t take it seriously in the sense that I was going to be an actor when I grew up. I was going to be a rock-and-roll singer or a baseball player. I didn’t really want to be an actor because growing up in Arkansas, it’s not like in New York or L.A. where that was actually available to you ... In Arkansas you can be a baseball player and you can be rock-and-roll singer. We had music and clubs, but you couldn’t just sit around the town square and do monologues for people. It just wasn’t an option.”
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