Star Trek: The Next Generation's Brent Spiner chats with Blockbuster.co.uk's Marshall Julius to mark the fortieth anniversary of the greatest science fiction franchise ever created.
With Paramount pulling out all the stops to celebrate Star Trek's 40th anniversary in style, besides lavishing journalists with champagne and freebies, they also found time to hook me up with Next Generation icon Brent Spiner, best known to his fans as beloved android Data, surely one of the most popular characters in all of Trek.
"I feel like a very special person!" jokes Brent. Adding, "Can you make sure everyone knows I'm being ironic, so it doesn't sound like I'm really full of myself?!" Instantly on a roll, though, Brent can't stop with the funny lines. "Really, I prefer to think of myself as the best character on all TV." Why stop at telly, I wonder? Why not all media? "Yes," Brent agrees. "The best character in the history of showbusiness!"
A jobbing actor for 20 years before Trek came knocking at his door, Brent insists he was perfectly happy in those early years. "I always hoped to get that big break, but when it didn't come, I said, 'Ok, I'll do Star Trek!' Really though, I almost didn't take the part, as I was perfectly happy with what I was doing, and was afraid of working on the same thing for seven years. It wasn't really something I'd ever thought about doing. So I told my agent I couldn't do it, but he said I should at least make the pilot, and even if I signed the contract, he could get me out of it if I really hated the experience. But I didn't hate it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the people I was working with and thought, 'Ok, I'll do this for a year.'"
As it turns out though, "You sign a contract up front, where you have to commit to a certain number of years. That's an ironclad contract. If I'd ever tried to get out of it, I could have ended up getting sued. Really, once you sign your name on the dotted line, you're there." Meaning that basically his agent lied to him to get him to take the job. "Yeah," confirms Brent. "I think he did." Sound like a good agent to me. "Exactly!" says Brent with a smile. "He did very well!"
How exactly did Trek change his life, then? "I didn't have to worry about paying the rent any more, which was a monthly worry before. It was a luxurious situation to be in. It was also nice to eat out in expensive restaurants and not worry about how much the bill was going to come to. Aside from that, I was traveling first class instead of coach, and in some ways, that's the best thing that happens to you when you become successful. Other than that, though, nothing in my life really changed."
Brent is quick to praise his co-stars when asked about the famously cheerful atmosphere on the set of the Next Generation. "We had a really great time. It was a wonderful group to be with, and we all enjoyed being around one another. Patrick [Stewart] once said, 'How many jobs can you go to where you laugh every day?' And that's what we did. Every day we had a laugh."
Sounds like the perfect job. Brent nods. "The only thing that wasn't perfect were the hours. It wasn't that the make up took so long to apply and remove, or the 16 hour days, but the difficult dialogue I had to learn in the evenings. It had to be smooth, like I wasn't thinking about it. I really had to be on top of it. And it was a lot of work! I had no life while I was doing Star Trek. But that said, it was a really fun job."
When asked about his favourite episodes, as a viewer and as an actor, Brent makes a startling admission. "I actually didn't see most of them. I mean, I watched maybe the first 20 or so, and then I felt I'd spent enough time doing that. I'd read them all and acted in them all and really didn't need to watch them too. There was nothing to be gained. So I don't remember them! It was like one big, long episode to me!"
Brent at least concedes that one day, eventually, he might possibly get around to watching his famous show. "Maybe when I'm very, very, very old, if I'm on an island and I've got a DVD player and the Next Gen DVDs..." Clearly, he can't wait. "Yeah, really, I'm dying to see them... They're not for me though. Why do I need to see them? I've done movies I've never seen too. I don't particularly enjoy watching myself, and I'm also not interested. I've done that. It's over. Let's move on..."
Though he'll probably never see the results, Brent adds he'd be happy to return to the role, under the right circumstances. "If I liked the script, if I thought it was good, sure. When Rick [Berman] asked me to go on Enterprise for three episodes, I was happy to do it. They were good. It was fun."
Just because he doesn't watch Star Trek doesn't mean he doesn't like TV. Far from it. "I watch Deadwood. I watch the Sopranos. I watch 24. I watch Entourage. I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm." As for his favourite films, Brent has a clear winner. "Definitely The Searchers. It's a great movie. John Wayne gives such a great performance, so dark and mysterious, really cruel and a terrible racist too. It really stands out from his other work.
I had a really great Searchers experience a few years ago. I had a meeting with Martin Scorsese about a role in The Aviator, which I was excited about as he's the greatest American filmmaker right now. So we had an very nice conversation about his earlier movies, and I was getting ready to leave I said, 'Hey, let me ask you a question. What movie do you think you've seen more than any other?' He said, 'Well, I guess that would be The Searchers. So I said, 'I would say The Searchers too. So we spent another 20 minutes talking about The Searchers, and the next day I got a phone call asking me to be in the movie. So The Searchers was really the liaison for me being in that film.
Other than that, "I love The Third Man, but it's difficult to limit myself to just a few titles. There's a Laurel and Hardy movie called Blotto that I love. And a Buster Keaton film called Sherlock Jr. And any time that Fred Astaire dances, I'm happy to be sitting there. I love The Band Wagon. I think that's a really underrated film and the greatest musical ever. And I do like sci fi, honestly. Just not any more than I like westerns, musicals or anything else."