At 84, William Shatner is still as sharp and charismatic as ever. I found this out when I chatted with the iconic star in advance of his one-man show,
Shatner’s World: We Just Live In It , which hits the Mahaffey Theater next week. He laid on the charm thick and quick, like someone who’s been doing phoners for more than six decades.
And he has.
Star Trek is one of the earliest shows I remember watching with my dad, but by the time I was introduced to Shatner’s magic via reruns of the series in the mid-‘80s, he’d been an actor for 36 years and was on his second career revival in TV police drama
T.J. Hooker . Since then, Shatner has secured his grip on the collective subconscious and maintained a foothold in pop culture with a diverse portfolio of work: host of reality crime show
Rescue 911 ; spokesman for name-your-price travel site Priceline.com; Emmy-and-Golden Globe-winning actor in
Boston Legal ; author of more than 35 titles (both fiction and nonfiction); recording artist with four LPs to his credit; and, with
Shatner’s World (which premiered on Broadway in 2012), an acclaimed monologuist.
Amidst the banter, we touched on his book about late friend Leonard Nimoy (
Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man comes out February 16), his upcoming sci-fi novel with Jeff Rovin (“You’ll be the first person I’m telling this to,” he claimed, and even though it wasn’t true, he made me feel special nonetheless), his music, and the dynamic one-man show that brings him to town.
William Shatner : Leilani!
LP: Oh my gosh! Is this William Shatner?
Oh my god, you’re a sort of counter-culture newspaper, it says here.
Alternative, if you will.
Here’s what my one-liner says: “Best writers in the area work there.”
Yes, I agree with that, 100 percent.
Leilani, is that a Hawaiian name?
Yes, it is.
Just came back from there.
Really? How was that?
Beautiful. Do you miss it?
I was actually born in California. I just got lucky with the name.
Ahh, are you of Hawaiian descent?
I’m not. I’m plain old American.
So you don’t have the exotic air of a Hawaiian lady with long hair and a grass skirt?
I would say that I still have the exotic air but just in the normal fantastic sense.
[Laughs] So I’m gonna be at the Mahaffey Theater on February 3, and I’m looking forward to it.
I’m super stoked about it, too, and I’m stoked to be talking to you today. I kind of feel like I’ve known you my whole life.
Oh, Leilani, with that name, I feel the same thing, this connection between us.
Do people say that to you that a lot?
It’s the first time.
Good. Well, then I feel special.
You are special, and you were special when your mother bore you.
Let’s talk about you… Your portfolio is pretty diverse. How do you condense such a long career into a two-hour show?
The show, if you were to try and find a basic explanation, would be about saying yes to life, yes to the joys of life, yes to being positive and knowing how precious life is and how quickly it’s over, and how you should be in the moment and enjoy everything, including the suffering. It then becomes laughter and tears and pure entertainment. It’s not so much about my career, as it is some wonderful stories about things that happened that become part of everybody’s enrichment of their lives.
So, how you became the fabric of who you are…?
That’s a perfect phrase, and I’m going to use it from here on out — Leilani Polk told me it was the fabric of my life! And that’s right! Plucked out from this large blanket — tapestry — is this small portion of my life.
How did it come to fruition?
A one-man show is the final challenge of the theater, in that you’re alone on stage with no other accoutrements, and you’re attempting to hold the audience’s attention for two hours. I came to Los Angeles while I was on tour with this show, and went to see an oratory at the big theater where I was going to be. There were 2,500 people on stage — singers, musicians — and 3,500 people in the audience. Then, a few days later, I stepped on that same stage and I was alone, one person, in front of 3,500 people, and I had to do the same thing for an hour-and-a-half to two hours — keep the people from leaving their seats or for that matter, getting restless. It emphasized what a feat it is for anyone to produce a one-man show.
Did returning to the stage feel natural?
Yes, but I never have left the theater. One way or another, I’ve been on stage. The irony, or the coincidence, was that over the years, I’d get requests from New York to be in a play, but they wanted six months at least of my life and I wasn’t willing to give up that much time from my pursuits here in Los Angeles. So I always turned them down. Then I began to realize, I guess I’ll never go back to Broadway. Then the opportunity to do this one-man show in a limited run at the very theater, The Music Box, that I had left all those years before, when I thought I’d never go back to Broadway, there I was, back in the same theater all those years later.
So it’s a comfortable artform for you.
Yes, I’m comfortable if I know the material, and if I know the material works. I’m more than comfortable — I’m entranced, being in front of an audience, hoping to enthrall the audience, hoping to have that connection that enthralls us both. And I believe that’s what happens on this stage in the one-man show.
One of the most intriguing things about having watched your career is how you’ve gone from taking more serious roles to embracing your more comedic side.
Stand-up is an art form I admire — worship, really. Great stand-up comics are extraordinary. They’re doing a one-man show. They’re adding a layer of comedy on top of telling a story, which is another genius ability. I admire stand-up tremendously. Every time I attempt to do it, I’m a little embarrassed that I’m not as good as the comics I really admire. It’s a different kind of comedy I’m attempting.
Has your show changed at all from the original 2012 production?
No. Because I have a lot of visuals, I need to give the gentleman backstage who works the computers word cues. The stories are basically the same. I’ve honed them. If someone saw the show in New York and then came to see it at the Mahaffey, they’d be aware it is different. But what it is, I believe, is better in the way a knife is sharpened; it’s the same knife, you use that knife to slice your bread, but if you were sharpening it all the time, it would slice through the bread with a lot more facility.
I am actually a pretty big fan of your recorded output. I like throwing on [1968’s] The Transformed Man at parties. People are always like, “Is that William Shatner?!”
That’s great, Leilani, thank you so much, I appreciate that. What you’ll want to do is read a book that’ll be out in about five weeks, February 16, called
Leonard . I detail my friendship with Leonard Nimoy and talk about friendship in general. It’s getting rave reviews, so I’m becoming confident people will like it. [Check out Shatner’s recording with Nimoy on the 1997 compilation
Spaced Out on Spotify.]
How different were your recording experiences, then versus now?
With
The Transformed Man , I didn’t know what I was doing. I was flailing around. Knowing intuitively the musicality of the English language and having been trained in poetry, I was looking for the poetry of the language and trying to put music to it, but without the skill that I acquired later on. I became more skillful at the poetry and putting the music in, and then getting great help from the genius musicians I worked with, in putting a song together. Like Billy Sherwood in
Ponder the Mystery [his 2013 album] and Ben Folds [who produced 2004’s
Has Been ], they are creative geniuses who took what I wrote and made it something special.
Folds and Sherwood aside, were there any artists who made your recording experiences particularly memorable or enriching?
Sherwood put together a quintet that included his former bandmates from Yes [Tony Kaye and Rick Wakeman]. They were fabulous musicians. And then I did live performances of Ponder the Mystery in three rock ‘n’ roll havens here in the Los Angeles area. I got a kick out of that, with that group. They asked me to tour, but I didn’t think it would work. But, I got better at it, and now I know what I’m doing a little bit, as far as the music you can bring to the spoken word, the extended note, and what electronics can do to help you. Electronics can put you on key — they can raise or lower the note that you may not be hitting.
One day, artists probably aren’t going to have to sing anymore, they’ll just talk into the mic.
I was at the forefront of that! [Laughs]
Do any songs off those albums make an appearance in the show?
Just one. I am the show, with a musical number.
Star Trek pretty much informed my obsession with sci-fi, forever.
Well, Leilani, you’ll be the first person I’m telling this to. In October, I’m coming out with a sci-fi novel I’ve co-written with another writer. The guy I’m working with, Jeff Rovin, is so good, this novel is so unusual — I’d be interested in someday talking to you about it. It may be the best science fiction novel I’ve ever read. It’s sensational.
It’s truly been an honor, and I can’t wait to see your show. I’ll try and come say hello.
With that name, you’ve gotta introduce yourself.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2016.