RT Archive: Patrick Stewart's 1990 cover interview for Star Trek: The Next Generation

This interview was originally published in Radio Times magazine in September 1990.

What's a British actor, best known for his long association with the Royal Shakespeare Company, doing on the bridge of the USS Enterprise? Having a wonderful time, says Patrick Stewart, who was as surprised as anybody when he became Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the successor to the most famous science-fiction series ever.

Even for Hollywood, the story of Stewart's casting sounds too good to be true. "I was staying with an English professor at the University of California, Los Angeles," Stewart recalls. "He was giving a lecture on comedy and he asked me to read some extracts from Sheridan, Oscar Wilde and so on. One of the producers of Star Trek was in the lecture audience. He claims that at some point he turned to his wife and said, 'We've found our captain.'"

Stewart, who admits he knew "a little" but not much about the original series, says he had his doubts at the start. "When I came over to do the pilot show, I didn't unpack my suitcase for the whole month," he laughs. "I had a conviction that one morning they would all simultaneously wake and say, 'What have we done? We have cast this middle-aged, bald, Shakespearean actor as the captain of the Enterprise. We must have been insane!'"

He needn't have worried. He is now filming the fourth year of Star Trek: The Next Generation in America and both he and the show are solid hits. Gone are the days when Kirk and Spock led the crew into thrilling galactic adventures.

Stewart's captain is older (in the 24th century people are still very active even in their 90s), quieter and less headstrong than William Shatner's Kirk, and more the diplomat than the warrior.

"At first it was thought that you don't risk your captain, so 1 was forever dispatching my teams to all kinds of alien worlds while I stayed up on the bridge. I was a cross between an ambassador and a social worker."

Stewart felt he was missing out on the action, so for the third series he demanded changes – and got them, a measure of the authority this son of a regimental sergeant major ("he would be irritated beyond belief by my becoming a captain, when I didn't even do National Service") now commands in Hollywood.

Though he's signed for six years with Star Trek, the RSC remains his great love. But the lure of a television series was just "too big an adventure" to miss.

"That was the appeal for me. I'd only done Maybury and I, Claudius for the BBC, and was briefly in Smiley's People and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy [as Karla]. Fortunately. I didn't know the full significance of Star Trek in America, how millions live their lives according to its philosophy. If I'd known, I'd have been too frightened to get out of bed."

So has he met his famous predecessor? "We've met informally. I was having lunch at Paramount one day and so was William Shatner, and we were introduced.

"Later, a young executive, very cool and collected, came over and asked me if it was the first time the two captains had met. When I said yes, he jumped in the air and shrieked, 'Oh my god! And I was there!'"

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