That’s interesting. Because in the 2011 interview I saw, Takei said they were closer than this. He said that Keonig was his closest friend among the cast and that they spoke regularly on the phone and got together for dinner on a regular basis. Takei also talked about how he and his husband had celebrated New Year’s Day together with Koenig and his wife.
It may just be that this is two different perspectives. But the relationship Koenig described in 2014 seems more distant than the one Takei described in 2011.
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I read Koenig’s biography about a billion years ago and remember him having nothing but positive comments about Takei and IIRC that Takei was his closest friend amongst the group. He had negative things to say about Shatner(I think Nimoy and Deforest Kelley were the only two cast members who didn’t hate him because frankly he couldn’t cut scenes from them) but no one else and even in the case of Shatner, he seems to admit that he and others somewhat enabled Shatner by knuckingly under to him.
I’m not saying it’s a fact. I’ve never met George Takei, much less worked with him.
But by his own admission, he was pushing to get more lines when he was on Star Trek. And he admits he saw Koenig as competition when he was first cast on the show. This is the same kind of thing that people complain about Shatner doing.
And the reason Koenig had been added to the show was because Takei had gone off to do a movie. Okay, I accept it was an opportunity and he needed to look out for his own career. But by doing the movie he was putting a burden on the show he had already signed up for. It must have been annoying to the studio that Takei spent the first season asking for a bigger part and then turned around and told them he wanted to skip several episodes so he could do a movie.
As for the Takei-Shatner feud, I find that usually when I hear about it, it’s Takei saying something about Shatner. Shatner’s atitude seems to be “We don’t like each other. But why make an issue out of it?” Takei seems to be the one who wants call attention to the fact they don’t like each other.
And there was Takei’s encounter with Wil Wheaton at a convention. There was a documentary crew following Takei around to make a movie about him. Takei was at a convention and encountered Wheaton. Wheaton said hello and out of the blue, Takei tells Wheaton he should exercise more and lose some weight. Wheaton was obviously caught off guard by this comment and tried to make a joke about it but Takei told him seriously he needed to maintain his appearance better.
Right then. I guess he didn’t see the neighbor girl as serious competition. I think I’ll continue to like him anyway, based on who I knew. I can see why he might be difficult to work with though.
Wow, I’d heard two completely different other reasons for Koenig’s inclusion (They needed a Russian and he had a Beatles haircut), but I don’t doubt this for a second. I thought that if his character was replacing anybody, it was Riley, the hep-talking beatnik from two or three episodes of Season 1.
They asked about this during the Q&A. He said he was brought onto the show “because 14 year olds didn’t have anyone they could relate to” in the initial cast, and yes that it was to be the Davy Jones (Monkees) of the show.
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And there was Takei’s encounter with Wil Wheaton at a convention. There was a documentary crew following Takei around to make a movie about him. Takei was at a convention and encountered Wheaton. Wheaton said hello and out of the blue, Takei tells Wheaton he should exercise more and lose some weight. Wheaton was obviously caught off guard by this comment and tried to make a joke about it but Takei told him seriously he needed to maintain his appearance better.
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He’s always been a major health and exercise enthusiast. My cousin saw him at a con in the '80s when a fan came to his table with a lit cigarette. (In the 80s that was more becoming more restricted but was still acceptable in some places.) Takei asked if he could see the pack and then he crumpled it and tossed it and told him he was killing himself and others around him. He met his husband as part of an exercise group.
Not saying what he said wasn’t rude and presumptuous- I need to lose weight but would still think it was rude as hell if anybody other than my doctor or somebody I’d asked about it pointed it out- but he could just be expressing concern and not wanting him to have the problems James Doohan had in later years.
Exhibit A is my mother-in-law. She’s a very generous person, but very strongly opinionated, and she’s one of those people who seemingly has no filter between her brain & her mouth that stops to ask “Do I really want to say this?”
As a result, she absolutely can be a very difficult person to get along with. I’m about 99% sure my father-in-law doesn’t like her much at all, and only stays with her for the sake of the children (my wife & her sister).
