The night that William Shatner found himself squaring off against WWE legend Jerry “The KIng” Lawler during a 1995 match in Dallas, Texas was an interesting one.
“I knew it was fake, but I didn’t realize how fake it is,” he tells UCR now. What was supposed to be a brief dalliance ended up establishing the Star Trek legend as one of the many characters in the wrestling universe. He ended up inducting Lawler into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2007. A little more than a decade later, Shatner himself was inducted into the Hall as part of the 2020 class.
It’s just one of the many fascinating milestones that Shatner has enjoyed throughout his long career. At the age of 90, he became the oldest person to travel into space, a journey which surprisingly, he said, filled him with “overwhelming sadness.”
But he’s hardly mournful, but instead, often philosophical, something which comes through watching his 2023 documentary, You Can Call Me Bill. While he has a formidable legacy that’s hard to match, he remains grounded. “Nothing lasts forever. Statues are torn down, buildings crumble, names are taken off of labels and things like that,” he tells us. “The only thing that continues to exist are the waves that good deeds make.”
During a lengthy conversation, he discussed a variety of topics, including the film, the appreciation that he has for Star Trek and his most recent album, Where Will the Animals Sleep? Songs for Kids and Other Living Things.
As with everything you do, your new album seems to have intriguing roots. How did it come about?
It’s an interesting story. I’ve spent a great deal of my recent past studying and reading stories about the interconnection. My life is filled with dogs and horses and I see the connection there, how dogs have been with mankind for 10,000 years, but it goes much further back than that, I think. In any case, those two entities have been with human beings for that length of time. That merely stirred this interest in how entwined all of nature is. The more I read and talked, I learned how the simplest animals are connected to the more complex animals. Everything is intelligent. There’s an intelligence, probably in the universe, but certainly on Earth that mankind doesn’t totally recognize. From the simplest cell lifeforms to the more complex [ones] like human beings. We’re all interconnected. Pollinators using flowers to pollinate and then make honey and then animals eat the honey, that connection is fairly obvious. Then you get to the more complex interconnections. Where species communicate with other species.
The stories of animals…I just read a story about a tiger who hung around a human place of living, probably a tribe — and stayed just far enough away so nobody got hurt, but kept roaring there. They finally began to understand that the tiger was trying to communicate. They followed the tiger back through the woods, taking their chances, and discovered that a couple of her babies were hurt by stepping on a landmine that had been put there years before. They doctored the babies for a couple of weeks and then returned the babies to the tiger. That communication of a man-eating tiger that could eat a human being, the tiger had sought out the human beings to help her babies. That involves a complex knowledge by the tiger, the theory that the humans would understand what I need to communicate. So there’s miracles happening all of the time out there. We just have to be aware enough to observe it. That’s what I’ve been learning.
Your recording career began officially with The Transformed Man album in 1968. The idea of you getting into music surprised some people. What made you want to pursue it?
Yeah, yeah, it makes no sense, really. Decca Records at that time was a very popular label. They asked me to do an album. Why they would ask me, I don’t know. But I thought about it for a while. What do I do on an album? It turns out that the guy pushing the dolly was a stagehand. He was a young guy and we kind of formed a friendship on the set. He said, “My father is a musician and I’m a musician. Maybe we can help.” The original concept was mine. I wanted to show the relationship between the spoken word and the sung word and how lyrics are every bit as musical. The lyric of the song is every bit as important as anything else in there. You can sing the song by knowing the lyric — and finding a piece of literature that either agreed with or disagreed with the velocity of the song. I thought, “Wow, that’s a good concept.” So I did it as best I can and in a couple of cases, I’m successful. One case that I’m successful in is “To be or not to be,” the Shakespearan soliloquy [from Hamlet] of whether I should live or not live. It segues into “It Was a Very Good Year” and that made sense to me. That’s the best of The Transformed Man. Now, it wasn’t a success and went dormant until Ben Folds found it in a garage sale years later. He called me and said, “I’d like to work with you.” Working with his genius ability of melody and lyric, he wrote a song called “In Love” on the Fear of Pop album [in 1998]. That became a form of friendship with Ben and the means of resurrecting whatever I wanted to do musically. That begat the ability to get somebody to finance an album of me doing songs.
Listen to William Shatner’s ‘Hamlet / It Was a Very Good Year’
In the opening scene of your recent documentary, You Can Call Me Bill, you ask the question, wondering what legacy you are going to leave behind. What do you think that legacy is?
Here’s how I feel about legacy. Nothing lasts forever. Statues are torn down, buildings crumble, names are taken off of labels and things like that. The only thing that continues to exist are the waves that good deeds make. You do a good deed for somebody, that’s liable to involve a good deed for that person. Payback. And so it goes, like the fluttering wings of a butterfly. The continuing action of a good deed is your legacy and it’s liable to last a long time. I don’t know about forever, but helping people and doing things is your legacy.
What do you appreciate most about the legacy that Star Trek has now?
You know, I was very busy prior to Star Trek. I had started on Broadway and starred in movies and television. I don’t know what would have occurred if Star Trek hadn’t entered my life, but in that one fell swoop, I became a desirable commodity and it changed my life. I feel I owe Star Trek everything. My talking to you now about an album that I invented along with a couple of friends, that’s [thanks to Star Trek]. Star Trek is the origination of my ability to do these albums. What a wonderful thing that is. I have nothing but love and appreciation for Star Trek. Of course, it then became this showbiz phenomenon where it exists 60 years later in many forms and it’s just as popular. What a legacy that is!
READ MORE: William Shatner’s Favorite Star Trek Episode
One of the moments I love in the film is your speech for George Lucas at the gala where the American Film Institute honored him. That seems like it would have been fun.
Well, it was a lot of fun. But what a room to go into. I mean, imagine. Did you see the looks on their faces when I first came out?
Watch William Shatner Honor George Lucas of ‘Star Wars’
Yeah, I wondered, was George in on the bit?
No, nobody was in on the bit! I come on stage and it was a hostile audience, like, “What the fuck is he doing there?” I was aware of that. [Laughs] It was a chance, man. It could have been a disaster.
Did you ever meet George outside of that?
I believe I have. It’s been many years, but I believe I’ve met him. I feel I know him and I would think he thinks the same of me. If we were to see each other in a room and sat down, it would be like we’ve known each other for a long time.
How did you get involved with the WWE?
One of the series that I’ve done [TekWar], someone said, “We’re on directly after wrestling on a Monday night. Would you fly to Texas and fool around with the guys?” Because we’re on next.” I thought, “That’s a great idea.” So I flew out to Texas and all of the wrestling guys were there. They knew me and all of the sudden, I was with these incredible athletes, learning to my amazement that they had to learn their lines and moves. We were walking to the arena and I heard somebody crying. I said “What’s that?” and they said, “Oh, that’s so-and-so, he’s having trouble learning his lines.” I began to realize more fully, because I’m from Montreal, which is where professional wrestling began — I knew that it was fake, but I didn’t realize how fake it is. I mean, the guy I wrote a book with was hired by Vince McMahon to write scenarios. I rehearsed throwing Jerry Lawler out of the ring. That was what I had to do. I knew a little judo and stuff like that, but it’s quite different. He launched himself out of the ring, is what happened. We laughed and in fact, I introduced him into the [WWE] Hall of Fame in Detroit.
READ MORE: 35 Great Rock and Wrestling Moments
Watch William Shatner Battle Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler
People are often amazed to learn that you’re 93. What do you attribute your longevity and healthy resilience to?
I think it’s probably good luck. I think I’ve been ill and I’ve had serious things go wrong with me. I’ve had serious things go wrong in life. But somehow, I’ve survived it and my joy of life is still there. You find so many people who have been ill or had sad things happen to them destroy their energy and lifeforce. In my case, it hasn’t been that way. I still love life as much as I ever have and probably more. I think that’s probably one reason. The other reason is my telomeres are longer than yours.
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