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[#STLV] William Shatner On Feud With George Takei: It Upsets Me

William Shatner

William Shatner’s well-documented feud with Geoerge Takei has been burning for decades. Both former Star Trek actors have taken jabs at each other during major media interviews, including on Howard Stern, Real Time with Bill Maher, and even in their autobiographies.

On Saturday, at the Official Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, a fan asked Shatner about the conflict and burying the hatchet during a question and answer session.

“I don’t know him. I don’t know him.”

“The hatchet? In George’s head?… Let me tell you about that, you know I’ve never expressed myself, I’ve always never answered George Takei’s mean-spirited comments on me for a life time, and I’ll take this opportunity to do that. I’ve never done it before…. I don’t know him. I don’t know him. Fifty years ago there was a young man named George Takei, who would come in… play his part, and left. I hardly knew him. ‘Hello George,’ I’d say, I was too busy reciting lines — I had a lot of work to do, so I was busy doing that and publicity… doing other things that I needed to do, whatever it was. I was an actor with ten pages of dialogue to do that day, and ten pages to learn for tomorrow, and the day after that and the day after that, and so on. I didn’t know him. I literally didn’t know him.” Shatner told the Las Vegas audience.

Takei and Shatner

“I have no idea who he is or what he is, or what he wants.”

“The six movies we made were a couple years apart, again he’d come in, ‘Hello George.’ I had no interaction with him whatsoever. In the last fifty years, the man has blackened my reputation. I am… I pride myself on being a professional actor, I’m there on time, I know my words, I’m amiable to almost anything because what’s important is making the performance and nothing else. I don’t have to be there for the spaceship being brought up uh…. one of the things he used against me was that I wasn’t at the debut of the Enterprise someplace… I was working! So he has demeaned me, really badly, ugly. Every so often I get in touch with him and say, ‘What are you doing? I don’t know. What did I do to you? What happened?’ I have no idea who he is or what he is, or what he wants.” he added.

“I don’t have any anger towards him.”

“I’ve never answered him, but he has continued to spoil my reputation in one way or another. I thought you know, ‘That’s enough,’ why would one person in this large audience, have a bad opinion of me because of George Takei? It makes me – it upsets me. So I don’t, I’m not burying any hatchet, I don’t have any anger towards him. I do not know, I want you to hear me, I do not know who George Takei is! What drives him, what makes him, I do not know who he is. He invites me to his wedding, I don’t know him! Why would you invite someone like me to your wedding when you don’t know me? I haven’t spoken to you in twenty years, thirty years, why would you invite me to the wedding? Have you got a thought on that?”

The fan responded by saying that he doesn’t know Takei.

“Well, why would you, since you and I don’t know, why would you invite me?” Shatner asked.

The fan answered by saying: “Because you’re Captain Kirk.”

“There you go. It has nothing to do with, ‘I want you to celebrate with me, and be joyous with me at my wedding.’ It has to do with, what you just said. So I don’t have any hatchet to bury. I do not carry that hatchet. I carry a peace sign.”

(via Roddenberry Entertainment on Facebook)

[Photo: Laurie Lee/TrekNews.net]

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