Patrick Stewart had doubts about becoming Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise. The English actor recalled his turmoil on The Late Late Show with James Corden on Wednesday.
His hesitation stemmed from having to sign a six-year contract to play the role on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
“I didn’t, couldn’t, accept what it was I’d taken on,” he explained. “I had one or two connections in TV and things, and I said, ‘What should I do?’ I just learned that I had to sign a six-year contract. Well, there were a list of plays I had to do, Shakespeare, lined up. And I said, ‘I can’t do this.’'”
(Long before the Star Trek offer, Stewart earned acclaim onstage as a Shakespearean actor.)
He continued, “My agent said, ‘Look, you know, you cannot revive an iconic show. You cannot. It’s not going to work. So just come over here, do a dozen episodes, maybe less, and make some money for the first time in your life…and go home.’ That was the prediction for me: six months, no more.”
But Star Trek: Next Generation went for nearly 180 episodes over seven seasons (from 1987 to 1994), and four feature films followed, all helmed by Stewart playing Picard. More recently, he reprised the role on Star Trek: Picard, the third and final season of which wrapped up this month on the streaming service Paramount+.
Precisely how much money Stewart has made from the role is not publicly available information, but it’s safe to say he’s earned at least tens of millions of dollars from it. He earned $14 million from the last movie alone (Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002).
The fame he’s achieved by playing a starship captain has come with other perks. Asked by Corden if actual pilots gave him special treatment when flying, Stewart replied, “At the beginning, I was continually being invited onto the flight deck once the plane was in the air and flying.”
He added, “I was on the flight deck of [the now-retired supersonic airliner] Concorde, and what I did was press the two middle buttons of the four buttons that activated the engines into supersonic.”
Seated next to him on the show was Hollywood star Mila Kunis, a Picard “superfan” who recalled she once had the captain’s voice as her Nokia phone’s ringtone saying, “Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise.”