William Shatner addresses George Takei feud: "It's like a sickness"

George Takei; William Shatner

It doesn’t seem that there will be any burying of the hatchet between William Shatner and George Takei in their long-standing feud. Takei has been taking swipes at his former Star Trek co-star for decades, with no sign of slowing down; when Shatner went to space in 2021, Takei remarked that he was an “unfit” specimen who was “boldly going where other people have gone before.”

In his new memoir titled, ahem, Boldly Go, Shatner writes of being bewildered that his Star Trek co-stars didn’t like him (particularly Leonard Nimoy, with whom he had a falling out in the last years of Nimoy’s life). After being told by Nichelle Nichols that their coworkers found him “cold and arrogant,” he writes (via The Times UK), “I was horrified to learn this, ashamed that I hadn’t realized it.”

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Well, the horror has since worn off, and now he just sounds annoyed that they keep bothering him. “I began to understand that they were doing it for publicity. Sixty years after some incident they are still on that track. Don’t you think that’s a little weird? It’s like a sickness,” he tells The Times. “George has never stopped blackening my name. These people are bitter and embittered. I have run out of patience with them. Why give credence to people consumed by envy and hate?”

Wouldn’t you love to know what “some incident” is? Whatever it may be, it apparently wasn’t repeated on the set of Boston Legal: “James Spader was wonderful, the whole cast was wonderful, and I have never heard a word from them saying how much they didn’t like me.”

And that’s a good thing for Shatner, too, because it must take up a lot of energy to sustain the unadulterated loathing between Shatner and Takei. “Don’t hate George. The only time he gets press is when he talks bad about me,” Shatner reportedly tweeted (via Screen Rant) after Takei’s space snark. “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!” Clearly, the feud continues to live long and prosper.

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