George Takei Lost Patience With a Certain "Cantankerous" Star Trek Co-Star
Relationships between some of the actors from the original Star Trek cast grew strained as the years went on.
As we have already covered before, William Shatner (Captain Kirk) and George Takei (Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu) seem to have a personal feud, which they made public, and recently Shatner accused his co-starts from 1960s, particularly Takei, in continuing that feud that for the sake of publicity.
"George [Takei] has never stopped blackening my name," he said. "These people are bitter and embittered. I have run out of patience with them. Why give credence to people consumed by envy and hate? "
In his most recent interview Takei fired back.
"I know he came to London to promote his book and talked about me wanting publicity by using his name," Takei said. "So I decided I don't need his name to get publicity."
He added:
"I'm not going to refer to Bill in this interview at all ... although I just did. He's just a cantankerous old man and I'm going to leave him to his devices. I'm not going to play his game. "
Upon being asked whether Shatner was "cantankerous" back then, during the filming of Star Trek, Takei said that Shatner "was self-involved," "enjoyed being the center of attention" and "wanted everyone to kowtow to him."
Whatever the reason, the quarrel between Shatner and Takei seem to be bitter. Even when Shatner recently went into space thanks to billionaire Jeff Bezos, Takei said he was a being sent as a "guinea pig" to assess the impact of space on an "unfit" specimen. (Shatner was 90 then!)
While Shatner now regrets that his friendship with Leonard Nimoy (Spock) deteriorated before the latter's death, and while in his memoir Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, Shatner said that he was devastated when another late co-star Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), accused him of being "cold and arrogant", he clearly has different feelings towards Takei, as quoted above.
The resentment appears to be mutual, and related to "some incident" sixty years ago. It is hard to say who is in the right here, but it is sad to see people nursing grudges for this long. It is unclear what the cause of the resentment is, but it is likely that it has been compounded by time, with both sides feeling upset and wronged for all these years.