How do you untangle a feud that’s lasted half a century, spanning the distance of an entire sci-fi franchise and several fictional galaxies? It’s a challenge to be sure, but it’s clear even to the naked eye that “Star Trek” stars George Takei and William Shatner have a whole lot of baggage. Their distaste for one another is no secret; they’ve been known to unpack it publicly during interviews, in books, and via social media posts, even decades after they last worked together. Now in their 80s and 90s respectively, the pair still grab headlines for the occasional verbal swipe at one another.
So, what went wrong between Shatner and Takei? It depends on which of the two you ask, but some of the earliest and most complete explanations of their time on “Star Trek” come from Takei’s 1994 autobiography “To The Stars.” In it, the Hikaru Sulu actor surprisingly notes that he was originally drawn to the “Star Trek” pilot partially due to Shatner’s involvement. He’d seen the actor perform in the play “A Shot in the Dark” (Takei had also caught some of Leonard Nimoy’s stage work), and described his experience watching Shatner act early on in powerful and positive terms.
Shatner rubbed Takei the wrong way on set
“He radiated energy and a boundless joy in his position,” Takei wrote of filming early season 1 “Star Trek” with Shatner, noting that the actor playing Captain Kirk was “the single most compelling presence there, the unmistakable star of the production.” While Takei doesn’t explicitly explain why his opinion on Shatner changed, it’s made clear through a series of fairly subtle anecdotes.
First, Shatner didn’t recognize Takei when the pair worked together on an episode of “Chrysler Fever” before “Star Trek” was picked up. The actor described Shatner ignoring his question about if he’d heard any “Trek” news and trying to make up for not remembering Takei with an “aggressive show of fondness” that came across as insincere. He also described some situations where Shatner seemed to make himself the center of attention to the displeasure of the rest of the cast, like when he allegedly forced photographers doing a piece on Nimoy to leave set or, apparently, posed as if he was helping to put out an already-controlled fire on the soundstage in a clear publicity stunt. Basically, the guy just rubbed Takei (and others) the wrong way.
Over the years, Takei became pretty open about his dislike for Shatner in the press, though he often still couched it in compliments of the actor’s talents. In 2004, he gave an interview with the Television Academy in which he reiterated that Shatner loved to be the center of attention, often quite literally stealing the spotlight from co-stars by getting shots of other actors cut and replaced with more of himself. By the time of Shatner’s Comedy Central roast in 2006, he put it more plainly, proclaiming: “I can finally say what I’ve waited 40 years to say: f**k you and the horse you rode in on!”
Potential wedding drama reignited the pair’s beef
Another source of drama came in 2008, when Shatner posted a YouTube video referencing Takei’s wedding, which he did not attend. “There’s such a sickness there. It’s so patently obvious that there is a psychosis there,” he said, according to Wired. “I don’t know what his original thing about me was. I have no idea.” A People article from the time provided more context, alleging that Shatner’s comments were in response to not being invited to Takei’s wedding (he and his husband Brad Altman were famously the first gay couple to apply for a marriage license in West Hollywood). “It is absolutely baffling to us because, in fact, we did invite Bill and we didn’t hear from him,” Takei told Entertainment Tonight, adding that “every time there was something happy to celebrate amongst [the ‘Star Trek’ cast]…he never showed up.”
Shatner piled on in his own 2011 book, “Shatner Rules.” The book, which was co-written by Chris Regan and marketed as a sort of trivia guidebook to Shatner’s life, features several direct insults towards Takei as well as Shatner’s own explanation for the beef. “George buys into the stolen close ups/lines stuff, and he also claims I kept his character from getting his own Federation starship in the movies,” Shatner explained, noting that several performers from the show don’t like him, citing their cut lines as a reason. “There’s been a great deal of enmity between George and me. He’s been saying mean things about me for nearly 40 years now. […] Criticizing me publicly, in every venue imaginable!” Shatner wrote.
Shatner made it weird several times
His comebacks in the book are various and not great. At one point, he recalled Takei saying Shatner has “a big, shiny ego” and retorted that maybe Takei should polish his more. In an imagined response to his Comedy Central Roast (even though he already responded that night, making an off-color joke implying that Takei is always asking to perform fellatio on him), Shatner made a weird joke about Takei committing bestiality. “Well, I went home with my wife that night,” he joked. “I did, however, see George walking around later with a bridle and a bouquet of roses, so who knows what happened?” Elsewhere in the book, he invented the acronym LTEBGT, which stands for “Love To Everyone But George Takei.”
Things got even weirder at a 2015 “Star Trek” convention in Las Vegas, where Shatner was captured on film repeatedly claiming that Takei is basically a stranger to him. “I literally didn’t know him […] I had no interaction with him whatsoever,” Shatner said in a video captured by Morbid Traveler on YouTube. Bizarrely, Shatner insisted that “In the last 50 years, the man has blackened my reputation,” all while describing Takei’s own role in the show as dismissively as if he were a background actor. He also addressed the wedding fiasco, seeming to imply that he was invited after all. “I don’t have any animus towards him. I don’t know who he is. I want you to hear this — I do not know who George Takei is. What drives him, what makes him. I have no idea who he is. He invites me to his wedding. I don’t know him!”
Takei spoke about the cast fighting to keep their lines
Shatner seems to be telling on himself more than usual here, speaking about a former castmate (for three seasons and six films!), beloved friend of many of his respected colleagues, and trailblazing activist as if he’s a rude fan he met on the street. Yet, in-depth cast and crew interviews, including those done for Ben Robinson and Ian Spelling’s 2021 book “Star Trek: The Original Series — A Celebration,” make it pretty obvious that some people in the “Trek” cast — which included women and actors of color in groundbreaking roles — felt pushed to the margins by Shatner’s behavior. “When Sulu’s lines disappeared — and they did frequently — I knew why,” Takei is quoted as saying in the book. “The others were complaining about the same thing, and we all know what the source was.”
Takei spoke convincingly about what it was like to push for other characters on the Enterprise besides Spock and Captain Kirk to have a personality and backstory. “I was aware of who has the power, who gets the most fan mail, which is a measure of your worth,” he explained. “So, you make suggestions. You do a little lobbying, maybe suggest that Sulu has a family, or parents, or a love interest. They’re not all accepted.” If Shatner’s weird insistence that he didn’t know Takei is key to understanding his perspective on the situation, these statements feel like the key to understanding where Takei himself was coming from. He was an up-and-coming actor who wanted more lines, sure, but he was also an Asian-American man breaking new ground on television — one who vividly remembers watching himself and his castmates lose the chance to speak to America due to their problematic co-star.
The pair still take swipes at each other in the press
Unfortunately, Takei and Shatner haven’t made peace over time, and if anything, their insults towards one another have just gotten worse. In 2021, per ScreenRant, Takei spoke at a Broadway play opening about Shatner’s expedition to space with Jeff Bezos, saying, “He’s a guinea pig, 90 years old and it’s important to find out what happens. […] He’ll be a good specimen to study. Although he’s not the fittest specimen of 90 years old, so he’ll be a specimen that’s unfit!”
Shatner was understandably peeved and did his best Don Draper “I don’t think about you at all” act in response. “Don’t hate George. The only time he gets press is when he talks bad about me,” Shatner posted to X at the time (per SR). “He claims 50+ years ago I took away a camera angle that denied him 30 more seconds of prime time TV. I’m giving it back to him now by letting him spew his hatred for the world to see!” This subplot of the pair’s decades-long feud stretched into the next year, when Shatner told The Times, “I began to understand that [disgruntled former castmates] were doing it for publicity. 60 years after some incident they are still on that track. Don’t you think that’s a little weird?”
Ironically, Shatner kept the drama going, posting more about it to X two days later. “I do find it sad that a handful of day players who were on set for maybe 20-30 days a year total spent 50+ years creating fantasies to get noticed in the press,” the actor posted. After making so many similar statements about Takei before, it’s clear that he’s shading him and other outspoken “Trek” castmates here, and it’s once again a pretty un-self-aware take that minimizes the contributions of his co-stars.
These grudges seem destined to last a lifetime
This particular press cycle ended with Takei’s interview with The Guardian a couple weeks after Shatner’s continued digs. The actor, by that point 85 years old, at first tried to avoid mentioning Shatner by name, but was ultimately as frank as ever about why the “Star Trek” star ticks him off. He said that no one in the cast got along with the actor, but they were all otherwise tight-knit. It’s certainly true that there’s ample evidence of discord between Shatner and others on the cast, with Gene Roddenberry once even writing a letter to Shatner and Nimoy saying that they’d “pretty well divided up the market on selfishness and egocentricity.”
“I have much more substantial subject matter that I want to get publicity for, so I’m not going to refer to Bill in this interview at all,” Takei told the outlet in 2022, adding, “Although I just did.” He concluded that Shatner is “just a cantankerous old man and I’m going to leave him to his devices.” When asked if the star had always been cantankerous, Takei replied: “He was self-involved. He enjoyed being the center of attention. He wanted everyone to kowtow to him.” That pretty much sums it up.
“Star Trek” imagined a brighter future built on collaboration and open-mindedness, but one thing it couldn’t account for is the stubbornness of a grudge long-held. Decades into their feud, it seems unlikely that George Takei and William Shatner will ever truly bury the hatchet.