Stewart and Spiner are always whining about their association with Trek. It gets old. What, Stewart did Lifeforce before Trek?????
he was asked the question.. he answered it honestly..
to be fair i can completely understand why he found it a bit of an annoyance.. how would you like to be reminded that the best thing you ever did was in the past and you can never do anything better..
This is how Trek is portrayed by Sci-Fi Websites, magazines and entertainment news shows.. most of the time tho these questions are asked by Trek specific site that want the Trek goss.. in some article they ask him about what he though of Enterprise and the cancellation.. who cares, he was never on the show, he had nothing to do with the show other than he was once part of a show that was also TREK.. id reach my nerves end after a while..
Patrick has been in a bunch of interview lately about his up and coming projects like X-men and the 11th Hour, but a huge chunk of the questions are still Star Trek based...
to make a comparison.. how would you like it if your parents though your best achievement was being born..
I regarded Stewart as one of the few saving graces of TNG and thought it was terribly overrated. But if it's any comfort to him, plenty of my friends were as ashamed to have him associated with Trek as he now appears to be.
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psp1
You say Stewart should have expected notoriety when he signed to do TNG. Why? Why should he have expected the sequel series to Star Trek to be successful back in 1987? Or for that to define his career? I don't think that's what he really expected, and I don't blame him.
As for his chagrin at being constantly linked to Star Trek--the man is an ACTOR. He's a long-time member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is a HUGE thing for any actor. He's appeared in films and television unconnected to Trek, he's appeared on Broadway and in the West End, and he's always been a well-regarded classical actor. But people remember him most as part of a franchise of staggeringly inconsistent quality that has a notoriously fanatical, arrogant and shortsighted fanbase.
I'd be annoyed, too.
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by Rational Voice @ 12:46:02 on Apr 04
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by Cymro [The Welshylon] @ 14:22:10 on Apr 04
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by Dukat @ 17:19:45 on Apr 03
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by Cymro [The Welshylon] @ 18:27:06 on Apr 03
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by Dukat @ 19:20:50 on Apr 03
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by Cymro [The Welshylon] @ 04:26:04 on Apr 04
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by Dukat @ 07:26:17 on Apr 04
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by Cymro [The Welshylon] @ 11:30:25 on Apr 04
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by Dukat @ 13:40:44 on Apr 04
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by Cymro [The Welshylon] @ 04:25:41 on Apr 04
RE: OK, Hold on a minute.
by NKDietrich @ 21:32:17 on Apr 03
There's nothing here that hasn't been said by virtually every actor who ever put on a Starfleet uniform. If Stewart didn't want to be a fanboy poster child, he wouldn't have taken the job -- nor would he have followed it up by playing Professor X.
While the TOS cast can be forgiven for not realizing how well identified they'd become, by the time TNG rolled around everyone knew the rules of the game.
Stewart has done a lot of quality non-Trek work both before and after TNG, and he will no doubt continue to do so. But it took Shatner until his mid-70s and Boston Legal to finally find a role that made people forget about Kirk and for which he won acclaim ( everyone knew TJ Hooker was just Kirk with a badge). Hopefully Stewart won't have to wait quite as long.
Al
He may be really saying that he wants to recapture past glory. Star Trek was the top of his career, which makes him proud, but also irratated that people now "ignore the rest of his life".
Then go back to Star Trek and participate actively in bringing it back.
What else needs to be said?
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"Time is a face on the water."
-Stephen King, The Dark Tower Series-
Look, he's not badmouthing Star Trek or wanting people to forget that he was a part of it. Only hypersenstive Trekkies would be offended by his comments. He's an actor. Actors don't want to be heavily identified with one role. Introducing him as Star Trek's Patrick Stewart instead of just as Patrick Stewart is an insult to him. It's like saying he's a nobody without Star Trek or that Star Trek is the only notable thing he's done. Actors like to be able to disappear into a role and not have the audience see them as a character they played earlier. And coming back to do another Trek movie if he's given a big fat paycheck doesn't make him a hypocrite. It just means they gave him enough money to overlook the fact that he's heavily identified with this one role. Imagine if you were the CEO of some big company like Intel and you went to work as the CEO of Sun Microsystems, but long after you joined Sun, people kept referring to you as the guy from Intel. You can be proud of your time at Intel, but you'd rather people not need that label to describe you all the time.
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"Maybe in another thousand years, we'll have teleportation and all that other Star Trek stuff. But with our current technology, we can't even make William Shatner's hair look real." --- Bill Maher
No, it's cool, I expect this from some actors, and it's acceptable
by Schpock @ 20:36:19 on Apr 02
RE: No, it's cool, I expect this from some actors, and it's acceptable
by Greenspan @ 18:37:10 on Apr 03
RE: No, it's cool, I expect this from some actors, and it's acceptable
by Cymro [The Welshylon] @ 21:01:02 on Apr 02
RE: No, it's cool, I expect this from some actors, and it's acceptable
by Schpock @ 21:07:48 on Apr 02
I see the point on both sides and ultimately don't really care...you know if they greenlit another Star Trek, said, here's your multi-million dollar check, he'd do it and we'd all get what we want.
I AM sick of hypocrisy though. I watched one of his interviews on X-Men special features and he talked about his great honor and the once in a million odds of having two collosal characters to overshadow his career. So was he appreciative of this and the fact that he's made so much money and had a pretty amazing career? Or is annoyed for being recognized as the one role that made him famous? It's stupid and I'm sick of actor's groveling over type-casting. It's really selfish. They have lived a life and career that most people dream about.
He's not saying anything bad, he's not spitting on Trek at all, he's just annoyed that people identify him only to his Star Trek role.
You shouldn't forget that we,as trek fans, are biased...Of course we see his Star Trek achievements first. Of course, Star Trek gave him fame and it's normal that people refer to him as "Jean-Luc Picard". But to Patrick Stewart, the person, the actor, it's upsetting to not be recognized for the other stuff you did, and it which you put as much heart and effort.
So it's not at all about bashing Trek(far from that, he explicitly says he's proud of TNG and what they did), it's about somebody's work being recognized as a whole. We all have an ego...
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tupperfan.slightlyintoxicated.com
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-Billy Tellier, Quebec Stand-Up Comedian
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-Not a Ferengi rule of aquisition, but the words of Carlton Brown, commodities trader (The Corporation).
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It also really bothers him to have to deal with all the cash from Star Trek as well as the cash from X-Men. Who thinks Bryan Singer would ever be thinking of Patrick Stewart if Stewart wasn't Picard? It isn't like we don't know that Singer is a huge Trek fan or anything.
Anyone else fine it interesting that Stewart has lately been talking about the new Trek possibilities as well as hoping for X-Men 4. Probably a little annoyed to be Xavier, except that is just a different leader character in a different chair (same accent by the way-- how French was Picard anyway).
I guess not too annoyed by either character to take another 5-10 million. Glad he has standards.
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This is so typical of everyone who ever got a break on Star Trek. Terri Garr, Joan Collins and Marriette Hartley never cited TOS on their resumes. TWOK began with "Introducing Kirstie Alley" and she shrugged off Trek once she became a big star. We all know how the careers of Denise Crosby and Terry Farrell took off after Trek!
What's wrong with the arrogant ingrates that bite the hands that feed them? What's wrong with being associated with entertaining television that presents a hopeful vision of the future? What pompous jerks!
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GET A LIFE, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it's just a TV show!.... You've turned an enjoyable little job, that I did as a lark for a few years, into a COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME! -- William Shatner on Saturday Night Live (1986)
He'll probably get a little grumpier over the next few years. Maybe he'll mellow out after that like Shatner.
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The supervisor is Verizon!
Star Trek put Patrick Stewart on the map. By joining something that has a fervent fanbase, he had to know what he was potentially in for. Did anyone even know who Patrick Stewart was before TNG? I didn't. I suppose he'll become annoyed with his association with the X-Men franchise sooner or later too.
If he wants to be regarded as a "serious" actor, he can always go back to doing Shakespeare in some dodgy theater.
Patrick Stewart can change his name to Patrick Stuart (ala King James I) and do a re-enactment of MacBeth in Hampton Court with Stewart/Stuart playing the role of Banquo.
But seriously folks, Patrick Stewart has little to complain about. The entertainment landscape provides many good points as well as bad ones. He should count his blessings.
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We used to laugh at Grandpa when he'd head off and go fishing. But we wouldn't be laughing that evening when he'd come back with some whore he picked up in town.
-Jack Handey
...Who works on a pop culture phenomenon.
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"A matter of internal security: the age-old cry of the oppressor" -Captain Picard
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." -- Captain Picard
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