William Shatner Calls Star Trek Reboot Cameo Rumor ‘Fake News’

If you’ve heard the rumor that the original Captain James T. Kirk had a cameo cut from 2009’s Star Trek, William Shatner wants you to know its nothing more than “fake news.”

Speaking at this year’s Star Trek Las Vegas convention, a fan asked Shatner about the rumored role. Shatner asked the fan where he heard the rumor and the fan told him it came from a “reliable source.”

“Reliable source? That’s fake news!” Shatner retorted. “But seriously I have heard that story, but it has never been in my consciousness. I am not aware of that at all.”

The fan then described what Kirk’s cameo would have been, involving Leonard Nimoy’s Spock of the prime universe showing Zachary Quinto’s Kelving timeline Spock a recording of prime universe Kirk, played by Shatner.

“That is the stupidest scene I have ever heard of! When I saw Leonard [Nimoy] in the first movie that J.J. [Abrams] made and he went back in time, I said to Leonard ‘You know you are old when you go back in time and you are still old!” Shatner replied. “Those are gratuitous scenes! I want to play something – well the question is ‘How do you put this 50-year-older captain into that thing?’”

Trek Movie, who was present at the panel and was the “reliable source” that first reported on the scene, explained that the reason Shatner doesn’t have the scene in his consciousness is because it never made it out of the internal pitch phase.

While the scene was written with Shatner in mind, the creative team behind 2009’s Star Trek decided to cut it from the script before ever showing it to Shatner, partly because of Kirk’s death in Star Trek: Generations complicating the matter more than it was worth.

And so Chris Pine ended up being the only Captain Kirk in Star Trek.