![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The final show aired a half-century ago this year. Five? The original “Star Trek,” the mother ship of Trekiana, didn’t make it past three, running for just 79 episodes. The Starship Enterprise was tasked with a five-year mission. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Hikaru Sulu (Takei) and Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (Doohan) stand on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in the 1968 Season 3 "Star Trek" premiere. Spock (Nimoy), Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), Capt. He’s sort of where they meet in the middle,” says filmmaker Jennifer Kroot, who produced the 2014 documentary “To Be Takei.”Īfter enrolling as an architecture student at the University of California at Berkeley, Takei transferred to UCLA to pursue acting at a time when there was almost no work for Asian Americans except dubbing Japanese monster movies like “Rodan” into English and portraying crass caricatures in the Jerry Lewis vehicles “The Big Mouth” (1967) and “Which Way to the Front?” (1970). “George is a little outrageous, and a little Mr. Who else enjoys continued success through the curious alchemy of “Star Trek,” coming out at age 68 and regular appearances on “The Howard Stern Show”? Takei frequently refers to his life as “an American story.” It is also a singular, improbable one. He became “a social media mega-power” - his website’s phrasing, as he has 10 million followers each on two Facebook pages - fueled by a six-member influencer agency, which he calls “Team Takei.” That influence, to a doting and ever-expanding audience, might ensure his experience in the camps matters.įrom left, “Star Trek” actors Leonard Nimoy, Takei, DeForest Kelley and James Doohan attend the first showing of the Space Shuttle Enterprise in Palmdale, Calif., on Sept. In turn, that success created a springboard for social activism. “To me, the theater was life, its artists, the chroniclers of human history,” he writes in his 1994 autobiography, “To the Stars.” He would star as Hikaru Sulu in a short-lived sci-fi series that would, improbably, spawn more movie and television iterations than furry Tribbles. It’s possible those years in the camps subconsciously nudged Takei toward acting. “That experience in the camps gave me my identity,” he says in the apartment he shares with his husband, Brad, which is decorated with Japanese ink drawings and “Star Trek” bric-a-brac: a Starship Enterprise phone, a Sulu action figure in a Bonsai tree. Four years ago, he starred in the Broadway musical “Allegiance,” inspired by his personal history. In August, Takei appears in AMC’s 10-episode “The Terror: Infamy,” a horror saga partially set in an internment camp. He has a new graphic memoir, “They Called Us Enemy,” intended to reach all generations but especially the young, by the publisher of the best-selling “ March” trilogy by Rep. Almost three-quarters of a century after his release, he feels the crush of time: “I have to tell this story before there’s no one left to tell it.” This summer, Takei is accelerating his mission to make Americans remember. The only surviving photograph of Takei while he was in the Rohwer Japanese American Relocation Camp in Rohwer, Ark., in 19. “The resonance of my childhood in prison is so loud,” says the actor, who still lives in L.A. As a teenager, he came to understand the toll. Takei had little understanding of his family abandoning their belongings, the government questioning their patriotism and their return to Los Angeles with nothing, starting over on Skid Row. “We get to sleep where the horsies slept! Fun!” he thought. His father told him they were going for “a long vacation in the country.” Their first stop, of all places, was the Santa Anita Racetrack, where the family was assigned to sleep in the stalls. They shielded their children, creating a “Life Is Beautiful” experience often filled with wonder. He and his two younger siblings were never separated from their parents, who bore the brunt of fear and degradation in the swamps of Arkansas and the high desert of Northern California. Sitting in his Manhattan pied-à-terre near Carnegie Hall, the activist for gay rights and social justice calls his government’s actions “an endless cycle of inhumanity, cruelty and injustice repeated generation after generation” and says “it’s got to stop.” ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |