Patrick Stewart caused some havoc on set of his 1987 TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
The acclaimed British actor, 83, recalled in his new book “Making It So: A Memoir” — out Oct. 3 — how he “stormed off the set” after feeling like he was being made fun off.
In an excerpt published by the Hollywood Reporter, the “X-Men” alum noted that he came in conflict with his co-stars because he felt that they weren’t acting seriously enough.
“My castmates doubled over in laughter when they flubbed multiple takes and, in rehearsals, they sometimes ad-libbed things that weren’t in the script to make their lines funnier,” Stewart wrote.
He then compared how his early career experiences at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre had “been intense and serious.”
He felt that he wasn’t used to being so frivolous on a TV set rather than on a theater stage.
On “Star Trek,” he recalled growing “angry with the conduct of my peers, and that’s when I called that meeting in which I lectured the cast for goofing off.”
Stewart noted that co-star Denise Crosby had told him: “We’ve got to have some fun sometimes, Patrick.” This was a comment that the stage legend didn’t take lightly.
“We are not here, Denise, to have fun,” Stewart had told her at the time. He continued in his memoir: “The cast erupted in hysterics at my pompous declaration, I didn’t handle it well.”
“I didn’t enjoy being laughed at. I stormed off the set and into my trailer, slamming the door,” he recalled.
After going to his trailer to “sulk,” castmates Jonathan Frakes and Brent Spiner came by to squash the beef.
Spiner had told the “Gnomeo & Juliet” star: “Everything’s okay. People respect you, but I think you misjudged the situation here.”
While Frakes and Spiner had admitted to him that there was “too much goofing around” while filming, they stated that Stewart’s actions were very “off-putting.”
Stewart sighed: “I had failed to read the room, imposing [Royal Shakespeare Company] behavior on people accustomed to the ways of episodic television — which was, after all, what we were shooting.”
But despite the little incident, Stewart acknowledged that being on the sci-fi series was a great learning experience.
“I learned so much from my ‘Star Trek’ friends about acting for television and simply being a good colleague [on set],” he added. “It took me that entire first season to relax and thaw out from an uptight Englishman to a loose, amiable colleague given to quasi-American behavior but, bit by bit, I got there.”
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