Life Imitates Art: William Shatner Confesses He’ll Die ‘Alone’
Despite an echo from “Star Trek V,” the lives of actor and his character look very different
Bill Shatner long has maintained a very personal relationship with the classic Star Trek character he brought to life, Captain James T Kirk.
As far back as the early 1970’s, he said that he and Kirk were essentially the same.
In an interview with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry recorded on the Inside Star Trek LP, Shatner asserted that the only difference between actor and character was the dialogue coming out of their mouth:
Well, Gene, the act of putting on a television show — a television series — is such a back-breaking, all encompassing task. The hours we put in are so enormous that to be able to make up a character and sustain that for the years that we did, would be impossible I think for anyone, but certainly impossible for me. So what essentially comes out is William Shatner himself, as himself, saying the lines that were written for me to say in a situation that I was placed in.
So it was all the more resonant when Shatner made a comment recently that echoed something Kirk said years ago: “I’m going to die alone.”
Kirk said much the same thing in 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier:
He tells Bones (DeForest Kelley) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy), “I’ve always known I’ll die alone,” in a wistful moment around a campfire following a near-fatal accident that nearly killed the captain.
The circumstances that led Shatner and Kirk to the same conclusion couldn’t be more different.
For Shatner to admit that he will be alone at death is really a heartbreaking realization for the 93-year-old to acknowledge that he’s essentially lived a life without friendships.
Not only has it been well-documented just how fraught the actor’s relationships have been with the people closest to him — including with the former co-star whom Shatner described as “like a brother” — but he, himself, conceded as much in the recent interview when he said he “doesn’t have a friend left.”
But Kirk?
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Kirk always maintained a circle of friends.
Indeed, even though it’s not canon, the animated fan film, An Absent Friend, employs artificial intelligence technology to tell a story of Dr McCoy and Spock meeting at a bar to mourn following Kirk’s death in Star Trek: Generations, using the voices of the late Kelley and Nimoy:
While Shatner’s isolation seems rooted in simple loneliness, Kirk’s appears to be much more complex, and probably much more tied to what Kirk sees as the responsibility of command.
Perhaps he and Kirk are not really so alike, as Shatner would have us believe, after all.
And it is this similarity — and difference — that now makes it so interesting to watch other actors like Chris Pine and Paul Wesley’s in the role and see what their takes on Kirk look like, as well.
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