Patrick Stewart Had This Great Response To Reprising His Star Trek Role
This article is more than 2 years old
Whenever a beloved series gets cancelled, it opens up the doorway for the would-you-be-interested-in-more conversation. It feels like cast members of shows like Star Trek, The X-Files, Firefly, and others are destined to be asked this question in damn near every interview they do from now until the day they die. And I’m sure it has come up before, but someone recently asked Patrick Stewart if he’d be down for reprise his Star Trek: The Next Generation role of Jean-Luc Picard, and his answer is just about perfect.
Pumping up his new film, Match, where he apparently does a lot of cocaine, he took part in a Q&A session on Facebook. The topic of whether or not he’d be interested in revisiting the role he played for 176 episodes and a handful of movies came up, of course, and he gave this cheerful answer:
Absolutely…if it were a really good script. But, the poor soul is getting old and long in the tooth. He would probably need some help mounting his horse unlike the youthful captain of 30 years ago.
We know that Stewart will not play Professor Charles Xavier in the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse (nor will Ian McKellen show up as Magneto, which is disappointing on both fronts), so he has some time if anyone has a good script and a ton of discretionary income they could use to bankroll a movie. Anyone?
It’s been 13 years since Stewart played Picard in Star Trek: Nemesis (though it’s only been 12 since he voiced the character in a videogame), but you can bet your ass that just the prospect of seeing Stewart as Picard one more time is enough to get most Star Trek fans foaming at the mouth, at least a little bit. I think the most shocking thing about this statement, however, is that realization that is has in fact been almost 30 years since The Next Generation began in 1987. Logically I know it’s been that long, but there’s still a “holy shit” element to it.
Even if we don’t see Stewart’s Picard, the idea of a younger version of the character also came up, and he has a suggestion for who could take over. He said, “I would have to say it must be the actor, my son, Daniel Stewart.” You might as well keep it in the family.
We’ve heard lots of talk that Star Trek 3, the next in line for the rebooted Star Trek franchise, might feature William Shatner as Captain Kirk, appearing on screen with Leonard Nimoy’s Spock (though now that Simon Pegg is writing the script and Roberto Orci is out as director, who knows what the hell is going on over at Paramount), but why don’t they ever talk about bringing back Picard? That would be rad. Someone should get on that.
