The Audition Room: Sir Patrick Stewart was initially hated for Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Sir Patrick Stewart’s most defining role to date is Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Jean-Luc Picard – but he’s revealed that at one time he was not only refused the part, but was outright hated for it.
In the first of the latest additions to Metro.co.uk’s The Audition Room, Sir Patrick remembered how he became the captain of the USS Enterprise back in 1987 – and in his own words, the whole thing was ‘bizarre’.
Now he’s about to return to the role for new series Star Trek: Picard, which sees the character living in his vineyard, Chateau Picard, 10 years after retiring from Starfleet.
To commemorate where the show’s going, Sir Patrick flashed back for us to when he first got the now iconic role that has defined a sci-fi generation.
Speaking to Metro.co.uk, Sir Patrick told us: ‘My first audition was bizarre. I was in California, and I was doing quite a lot of teaching. I would go around theatre departments, particularly I connected with UCLA, and I would have master classes and workshops and so forth.
‘They were usually in Shakespeare, as that was my history until Star Trek. I was staying with a good friend, an English professor at UCLA, and he asked me if I would illustrate a public lecture he was giving by speaking, performing certain lines of dialogue that he wanted to include in his lecture.’
‘So we did that, and very early the next morning I got a phone call from my agent, whom I had never met, I mean why would I have an agent? And he said, I got two questions for you: Why does Gene Roddenberry want to see you this morning, and what the hell were you doing at UCLA last night?!,’ he laughed.
‘It turned out one of the executive producers of the first season, he and his wife had signed up for this course, and he came, and his wife confirmed it, that he at one point turned to her and said: “We’ve found Jean-Luc Picard”,’ the actor beamed.
But that’s a lot easier said than done, with the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, making absolutely no secret that he had no intention of casting the British actor in the series’ most important role.
‘When Gene Roddenberry met with me the next morning, he was singularly unimpressed,’ Sir Patrick laughed. ‘All I really remember about that meeting was, we met at this home up in the hills, and there was orange shagpile all over the floor, nothing but this orange shagpile. And that’s all I remember.
‘I was out of that house in about seven minutes, and later on when Robert Justman [consulting producer], who was the man who had seen me at UCLA, and Rick Berman [executive producer] went campaigning on my behalf [that I finally was considered].’
‘I’m told a memo was circulated around all the offices from Gene Roddenberry saying “I do not want to hear Patrick Stewart’s name again!”,’ the star boomed.
‘But it all turned out OK.’
Thank the Enterprise that it did too, as Jean-Luc Picard is now one of those roles that couldn’t be played by anyone else, and despite being the dapper age of 79, Sir Patrick is back in the action for Picard.
In the new series, the once former great captain is living with a massive regret after leaving his role in Starfleet… until a mysterious woman named Dahj (Isa Briones) appears on his doorstep, begging for help and with a shocking connection to his past.
Dragged back into the fold, it isn’t long before Picard is back on board a spaceship with the aim to help her, and reconnect with some old faces in the process.
Star Trek: Picard launches 24 January on Amazon Prime Video.
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