Why Paramount TV's President Once Threatened To Fire Patrick Stewart From Star Trek
For such a great show, it's remarkable how many times "Star Trek: The Next Generation" almost didn't get made. Read any behind-the-scenes story from the making of the show and you'll hear about chaos, power struggles, budget restrictions, and moments that almost blew up the entire project. William Shatner's 2014 film "Chaos on the Bridge" candidly documented the best, worst, and wildest stories from the making of the show, setting the record straight on decades-old gossip and giving actors, writers, and producers a chance to explain exactly what the hell was going on at Paramount from 1987 to 1994.
Hilariously, "Chaos on the Bridge" includes an entire section about situations in which legendary actor Patrick Stewart almost got fired. It's impossible to imagine "Star Trek" without its stoic genius Captain Picard, but apparently tensions on set led to at least one instance in which the actor ended up called to task by then-Paramount Television President John Pike. The story has a "Rashomon"-like shifting narrative and is almost certainly two separate incidents entirely, but either way, it involves Stewart putting his foot down about something and Pike putting his foot down even harder.
A clash of egos
In a story told by former writer-producer Mauric Hurley and Pike, the drama started when Stewart refused to lead a line. The Shakespearean actor has always had strong opinions on the show's writing, and in this instance, they boiled over into a major disagreement. "Egos kicked in in the second year, big time," Hurley said in "Chaos on the Bridge," admitting that his own was probably the biggest. "I get a call from the set. Patrick Stewart won't read this line," he reminisced, putting his fists together to demonstrate two butting heads. "So now it's this, it's the producer and the actor."
Shockingly, Hurley's proposed solution for the issue — which, admittedly, sounds like it was the culmination of a rocky year of production all around — was to pitch a complete cast reshuffle for season 2. "I say to [executive producer Rick Berman], 'Fire them all. I'll build the second season on the absolute tragedy that the Enterprise exploded of an unknown cause and lost everybody and now we must find a new Enterprise crew,'" Hurley tells Shatner in the documentary. For his part, Berman remembers Stewart threatening to walk. He explained: "There was an argument and it went on a little bit too long. Patrick got a little angry, and he sort of said, 'If you guys don't get out of here, I'm getting out of here.'"
A cafeteria showdown
Pike's part of the story is even more baffling and sounds like something that would come from a movie about an '80s Hollywood exec. He told Shatner that Berman told him Stewart was unhappy and "creatively not being satisfied," so Pike offered to fix the problem. Rather than having a conversation about it, the former Paramount Television president says he asked Stewart to meet him in the crowded Paramount dining room, arranging the time so the actor would have to be in costume and showing up 15 minutes late on purpose to make him wait. He said when he arrived, he told Stewart, "Patrick, let's just cut through it. I do know that you're creatively not being taxed. You're going to have to bear with us for a couple more weeks, but we have already put the script in the works and we will write your character out.'"
By Pike's recollection, Stewart appeared cowed by the escalation, and the pair never had any more problems. "Patrick Stewart and I never had another discussion after that," he concluded. This strange mind game apparently left a far more fleeting impression on the actor, who said he doesn't actually "recall that meeting very well." The actor did offer up another memory of an unhappy meeting with Pike, this one due to an even sillier problem: a weather man dressed as Captain Picard.
Enter: a costumed weatherman
"We were advised by the studio that Good Morning America would be coming into town. They were going to film on the set of 'Cheers' and they were going to film on the set of 'Star Trek,'" Stewart recalled. He doesn't note exactly when this happened, but a Facebook upload of the fateful special from fan group TrekCore places it in February 1992, years after the season-one run-in Hurley describes. Regardless, Stewart was unhappy with the set appearance. "I said, 'No! Screw you! We are working 12, 14, 16 hours a day to persuade people that we're living in the 24th century and we're out in space,'" he tells Shatner.
His point seemed to be that any behind-the-scenes footage would only serve to shatter the illusion of the Enterprise set, but when the taping took place regardless, he was also upset to see a weatherman dressed in Captain Picard's uniform. Stewart recalls asking the studio to set down some "ground rules" about the visit, namely, "Taking this stuff very, very seriously for the sake of our fans. No gags, no jokes, no Klingon jokes, no fooling around." This is actually a sweet sentiment, given that at the time, properties like "Star Trek" weren't so much considered a cool, niche area of interest as they were the butt of jokes about geek fans. Still, Stewart's response to a weatherman having some fun was clearly overblown.
Patrick Stewart stormed off set
"I won't repeat what I said, but I walked off the set," Stewart recalled in the 2014 documentary, adding that others around him were insisting he'd already been announced and couldn't leave a live recording. "I said 'F**k it, I'm out of here,'" Stewart told Shatner, the word bleeped but obvious for the family-friendly doc. According to the actor, he went all the way home, but was soon called back for a meeting with the big boss. "I had hardly been home more than a few minutes before my phone rang," he recalled. "'John Pike wants to see you in his office at two o'clock this afternoon.' I stood in front of his desk and was basically read the riot act."
Stewart relayed the story with a righteous little twinkle in his eye, as he said that off the record, Pike told him he understood why he acted the way he did. Still, he said, the exec told him he'd "embarrassed the studio," which was trying to keep the moment from reaching the press. Both Stewart and Pikes' differing stories about the actors' near-firing paint the storyteller as the hero, but the fact that there were enough points of conflict that neither remembered (or was willing to mention) the other's story is also telling. Frankly, "Chaos on the Bridge" makes "Star Trek: The Next Generation" sound like a job anyone would want to quit — even without a rogue weatherman and bit of public shaming in the cafeteria. Stewart obviously stuck with the show, playing Picard for 10 more seasons of "Star Trek" shows, including a recent reunion with his original castmates on "Star Trek: Picard."
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" is currently streaming on Paramount+. You can also watch the 2014 William Shatner documentary "Chaos on the Bridge" for free on YouTube Movies and TV.