Making It So: A Memoir

by Patrick Stewart

But as the weeks went on, Vivien’s struggles with exhaustion became more apparent. Her boyfriend, John, got the idea that it might help if every night, after the show, three or four of us in the company could join her at their apartment to drink some wine and play party games with Vivien until she got sleepy and could be tucked into bed. Tough assignment, right? John warned us that Vivien was unpredictable, and that there was no way of knowing how late she would want to stay up. But we bravely soldiered on in our noble mission to help a famous movie star get to sleep by partying with her.

For this production, I was given gloriously long tresses of the kind Daniel Day-Lewis later had in The Last of the Mohicans, only his hair was real. My costume (such as it was) consisted of a very abbreviated loincloth. A photograph of me in this production has circulated widely on the internet, which I will magnanimously accept as a compliment, though my Star Trek colleague Jonathan Frakes never misses an opportunity to mock me for my turn as the “famous nude Oberon.”

I quickly came to understand that Star Trek is not naturalistic television, especially where its captains are concerned. There is a formality to the way they speak and comport themselves that reminded me of numerous Shakespearean situations I’d been in onstage. I should play Jean-Luc, I realized, as if he were a character in Henry IV, which is about brave men.

It took a couple of seasons to implement the changes, but finally, a new costume designer, Robert Blackman, sympathetically came up with a two-piece uniform made of polyester. My new getup, with a top separate from my trousers, was still snug, but it had plenty of give. Gene, however, was adamant that Captain Picard’s uniform must always be unfailingly smooth. So every time I sat down in my captain’s chair, I tugged on the hem of my tunic—a tic that Star Trek fans have named the “Picard maneuver.”

Season One of The Next Generation was decidedly a mixed bag, but really, what first season isn’t?

Perhaps my most celebrated comic turn came in a 2005 episode of the TV show Extras, in which I played myself. Or, rather, a fictitious, deranged, sexually perverted version of myself.

I thought for sure that this phone call was a prank, for I have a friend who enjoys playing tricks on me in this manner. But when I challenged the caller, he kept insisting he really was Ricky, and his protestations were so convincingly Gervais-like in their desperation that I decided to hear him out.

It all went as planned, thank goodness. I remained upright, avoiding my greatest fear of tripping and falling. The Queen was as gracious as I had imagined she would be, though I am not entirely sure if she knew who I was. During our “small talk” moment, she asked of me, “And how long have you been doing this?” “Oh, Your Highness, a very, very long time,” I replied. “Oh, really?” she said. And that was it.