Star Trek: George Takei Responds to William Shatner’s Comments About the Pair’s Franchise Tensions

Buckle up folks, this one requires some back story. Back in August, Star Trek star George Takei spilled the beans about some of the on-set drama that occurred during the filming of the original series, specifically the origins of the tensions between he and co-star William Shatner. While appearing on David Tennant’s podcast, Takei revealed that it all started after Leonard Nimoy’s Spock became more popular than Shatner’s Captain Kirk. “There was one character whose charisma and whose mystery was like a magnet. It was Spock, the strange alien with pointy ears,” Takei said at the time. “That intrigued the audience, and women thought, ‘I’m the one who can arouse him.’ His fan letters were this many, and Leonard’s were that many, and that created an insecurity.”

In typical Shatner fashion, the actor and frequent social media user saw the quotes and responded, tweeting that same day: “George needs a new hobby. Now he’s making things up. We never saw fan letters. 🤷🏼‍♂️ That’s why there’s so many secretary signed photos. We barely saw George. He was in once a week at most-how would he know anything? The only person with jealousy is George.🙄”

Now in a new interview, almost two months after this online drama first went down, Takei has responded to Shatner’s rebuttal. Speaking with Yahoo in a new interview, the 83-year-old actor was asked if he had a comment regarding Shatner’s reply, saying: “Well, you can tell by those words that he is upset, to put it mildly. All that is bile. He’s had that same kind of relationship with everybody….Jimmy Doohan used to rail at Star Trek conventions about Bill and the latest offense that he committed on him. Every one of us have had experiences.”

He concluded, “In terms of Bill Shatner, I go by (the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader) Ginsberg advice, ‘Sometimes it helps to be deaf in a marriage.’”

It seems likely that yet another response from Shatner could arrive at any minute, though we may have to wait a few more weeks to learn George’s response to that. It’s worth noting however that previously Takei has said that the “feud” between the two stars has been overblown, though based on the above comments it seems like an easy thing to assume.

“This is silliness,” Takei said in 2017 while speaking to the Edmonton Journal. “There’s unanimity among the castmates, we’ve all had difficulties with Bill, but we’re all teammates and we work together….We do conventions, and we do cross paths. I’ll say, ‘Morning, Bill.’ And he’ll say, ‘Morning, George.’ And that’s it.”