By GustavoLeao / 05:37, 14 August 2010 / General Star Trek

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Deadline Hollywood posted a new interview with Star Trek The Next Generation star Patrick Stewart and here are excerpts.

Deadline Hollywood: You were knighted in June. How did this all go down?

Sir Patrick Stewart: I received a letter, and when I opened it there was shock and utter disbelief. It wasn't what I was expecting at all. People have been saying this could happen to me for several years, but they're not the kind of things I listened to. From the time I was much younger, I'd followed those actors who were similarly honored, like Sir Michael Redgrave, Sir Ian McKellan. I never anticipated someday being able to join those ranks. It's a terrific honor and I take it as one bestowed on my profession and my associations. I am very proud and very humbled by it.

DH: I suppose that by comparison, an Emmy nomination is pretty modest stuff. You've received three of those before.

SPS: It is not something I take lightly at all. It's an extraordinary distinction, particularly for playing a supporting player in a Shakespearean play. That doesn't happen to many actors on television. I feel it's an immense honor to the Royal Shakespeare Company and to those of us who form Shakespearean projects in Britain. The realization of a nomination is just thrilling.

DH: You never were nominated for your captain's role on Star Trek: The Next Generation. On the other hand, I'm the critic who said at the time the show premiered in 1987, "What are these people thinking, casting some bald-headed British guy?"

SPS: You wrote that?

DH: Well, um...

SPS: It echoed my own feelings at the time as well. Why would they cast a middle-aged bald English Shakespearean actor in this iconic role as captain of the Enterprise? It made no sense. But I guess Gene Roddenberry had some sort of instinct for it, and his producer Rick Berman was a champion of mine. Even so, it all felt borderline lunatic back then. It took me a good while to grow comfortable in that role. I know that my experience with classic Shakespeare was a great help to me in finding this heightened language that was larger than life and utterly epic.

The full interview is here.