When I was asked a few weeks ago if I would be interested in moderating a live, onstage Q&A with William Shatner at the Broward Center, competing emotions started to scramble my brain. On the one hand, it was an honor simply to be considered to share the same oxygen as the O.G. captain of Starship Enterprise. But the thought of appearing in front of a couple thousand people was a mortifying one. I’m a print guy, always and forever—I enjoy the low pressure and relative anonymity of just being a byline. Privacy is my jam.
But after spending 10 minutes trying to come up with another reason to decline the offer aside from my abject fear, I agreed. And for the next couple of weeks, not a day went by that I wasn’t consumed, at one point or another, with the anxiety of it all. What if I clam up on stage? What if I start to display visible flop sweat? What if I ask an off-putting question and receive a curt response? I also learned that I’d be starting the evening with a private dinner with Shatner (!) and his tour manager, which allowed for the possibility of even more embarrassments and faux pas. Part of me was secretly hoping the show would be canceled, so I wouldn’t have to go on.
Then the day, Nov. 9, finally arrived, as days tend to do. I arrived at the Broward Center, where I was escorted to a dressing room and handed a wad of index cards on which audience members had scribbled questions for Shatner. I had a few minutes to look them over, and was told to discard the “obvious bullshit.” (I.e., “Will you sing ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds for me?’”) I grabbed 10 or so of the more thoughtful queries alongside my own prepared questions, and was given the address of a Fort Lauderdale hotel restaurant, where I would join Shatner’s party in a private dining room.
I was the first to arrive, the tension thick as motor oil. But as soon as Shatner arrived, looking affable and definitively Shatnerian in a checkered blue-and-white button-down and dark bomber jacket, I was quickly put at ease. As I appreciated over dinner, Shatner sheds formality (“call me Bill”) and is an easy conversationalist, expressing an authentic curiosity toward everything. The man can eat—announcing that he hadn’t had any meals that day, he ordered enough dishes to satisfy a death row inmate’s last supper, complete with pastas and fish and appetizers and a pretentiously deconstructed salad, and enjoying just enough of each—but he can talk, too. From his position at the head of the table, he regaled his four guests with one tale after another, including the story of how he helped design a “Mad Max”-style three-wheeled motorbike for a planned cross-country trip, even though the prototype proved to be a dysfunctional boondoggle.
My own dinnertime exchanges were all business, but Shatner offered me useful tips on speaking into a handheld mic. (“Hold the microphone very close to your mouth, and speak slower than you normally would in conversation.”) And once he found out I was a jangle of nerves, he made sure to josh me about it, reminding me just how many people were out there in the audience.
Finally, the scheduled interview start time of 9:05 came around, just after attendees had enjoyed a special screening of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and were surely jonesing to see the main attraction by now, and not some obscure Boca print journalist. Immediately, as I walked onstage to introduce Shatner, my worst fears manifested: The microphone didn’t work. I tried a second mic, which was placed behind my moderator’s chair for that reason, and that didn’t work either. I was all alone up there, desperation beginning to cloud my eyes, when the initial mic suddenly began to function—saved, no doubt, by fleet troubleshooting from the backstage crew.
I regained my composure, teased the Shatner “sizzle reel” with the one mildly clever line I conjured up in the dressing room (“Before we boldly go to the man of the hour, let’s have a look … etc etc.”) and then welcomed Shatner to a standing ovation and thunderous applause.
The next hour was pretty much a blur. Because Shatner answers most questions in the form of paragraphs, not sentences—rich, varied, digressive paragraphs at that—I mostly just sat in my chair, basking in the raconteur’s sprawling stories like everybody else in the audience, albeit from the best seat in the house. Speaking extemporaneously about his adventures living with A.I., about pranking DeForest Kelley on a “Star Trek” set, about being spared a speeding ticket by a Trekkie cop, and about venturing into suborbital space on a Blue Origin rocket, Shatner exhibited the rhythm and timing of a seasoned standup comic. I only squeezed in about five questions—making it through only one of the carefully tailored questions over which I had labored for weeks—but I did manage to get a big laugh after one exchange, and I crested on the accompanying dopamine for half a second. Mostly, I blended into the background, which, like a good baseball catcher, is exactly what I was supposed to do.
When the interview ended, and I was briefly alone in the dressing room with Shatner, I expressed my disappointment about the cancelation of his great interview show, “I Don’t Understand With William Shatner,” following the removal of its Russia-based broadcaster from U.S. cable providers. “Fuckin’ Putin,” Shatner responded; he loved hosting the program as much as I enjoyed watching it.
Moments later, Shatner would be driven to an area for a VIP meet-and-greet, and I was headed home, my backpack heavy with Broward Center craft services, my relief palpable. In hindsight, knowing that how Shatner presents on TV—congenial, funny, sporting—is exactly how he is offstage, I clearly had nothing to worry about. Perhaps the next time I’m offered a plum assignment like this, I’ll remember a quote from a pep talk by one James Tiberius Kirk: “Hang on tight and survive. Everyone does.”
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