Star Trek's William Shatner hits back at George Takei criticism on David Tennant's podcast: "He's making things up"
The Star Trek feud was reignited by Takei's comments on David Tennant's podcast.
William Shatner has responded to criticism from co-star George Takei about his behaviour on the set of the iconic 1960s sci-fi series, saying "George is making things up".
Takei's comments were made on David Tennant's podcast David Tennant Does A Podcast With…, when he discussed the rivalry between Shatner and the rest of the cast and said at times it felt like "William Shatner against the world".
He said the bad feeling was created by the excess fan mail co-star Leonard Nimoy (Spock) received compared to Shatner, who played the captain of the USS Enterprise, James Kirk.
“You know, movie-making, TV-making, theatre-making is all about collaborative teamwork,” said Takei, 83. “A good actor knows that the scene works when there’s that dynamic going on with the cast. Some actors seem to feel that it’s a one-man show. That’s the source of some tensions.”
Shatner took to Twitter to register his anger with Takei's take, stating that the Star Trek cast never got to see the fan letters.
Shatner, 89, tweeted: "George needs a new hobby. Now he’s making things up. We never saw fan letters. That’s why there’s so many secretary signed photos. We barely saw George. He was in once a week at most-how would he know anything? The only person with jealousy is George."
It's not the first time Takei has suggested that Shatner was the source of the tension on the set of Star Trek. He was recently asked by The Guardian who his dream dinner guests were and responded: "My colleagues from Star Trek, with one exception".
According to Insider, in his 1994 autobiography To the Stars, Takei wrote that Shatner would act like he didn't know who Takei was on set and even alleged that Shatner changed a script so that Takei's character Sulu wouldn't take command of a starship in an episode.
Shatner has been reportedly involved in other feuds with his Star Trek co-stars. In 2016 he released a book, Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man, about his relationship with Nimoy but Shatner and Nimoy weren't talking when the latter died in 2015 and Shatner was mystified about why.
"I just don't know," he told The Hollywood Reporter, "and it is sad and it is permanent. I don't know why he stopped talking to me."
Shatner added that he had helped Nimoy's son produce a documentary about his father, For the Love of Spock (2016).
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