William Shatner: Velour Lost its Allure
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Hey, everybody. Welcome to Literally It Is I, Rob Lue. If you'd ever told my, let's say, 13-year-old self that I would be interviewing William Shatner, my 13-year-old self would have said, beam me up, Scotty. That's not going to happen.

But the day has arrived. William Shatner is now 90 years old. He has been an icon my entire life. He is a true Renaissance man. The song and dance, Shakespearean actor, author, one man show, iconic television actor. You name it, he's done it. His body of work is so insane, so obscure. Some of it is so random.

And yet classic. Seven decades, his career spans. Seven decades. And he has a new book out right now called Boldly Go, Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder. I mean, the guy is, he's amazing. This is a fun one.

I don't even want to use the phrase at your age because it sounds vaguely condescending. I mean it totally with nothing but vaguely condescending, just condescending, condescending. OK, well, the last time I saw you, I think we were doing this amazing Shakespearean reading. Do you remember this for Tom Hanks's charity?

Oh, I did several. I did many over the years. Yeah. I only did one. It was many, many years ago, but, um, what we did, I think you were playing bottom. So that would have been a midsummer night's dream. Is that what it would have been? I believe so. Tom Hanks and his wife Rita support the LA Shakespeare. Yeah. Yeah. So we were all meet once a year for the day. Yep.

at UCLA and at the performance hall. So we'd rehearse from the morning, about 10 o'clock in the morning, and then at 7 o'clock at night, the doors would open and the audience would come in, and we'd hold our scripts and give a full performance of a Shakespeare play. Ken Branagh? Ken Branagh? Was he there that time you were there? Yes, the version I was at, I can't imagine. I mean, it was Geoffrey Rush, Ken Branagh,

You, Tracy Ullman, Zach, I want to say Zach Braff, Christina Applegate. My God, what a memory. That's incredible, man. Because it was so star-studded. Oh, Kate Hudson. Jeez. I mean, it was Tom Hanks, Rita. Yeah. And Natalie Cole. Yeah. You know, I've totally, it's totally gone from my mind, except for

Except every so often I hit a good note and I remember some of those notes, you know. I mean, I hit a musical note in the Shakespeare thing. Oh, that was all right. Well, you started at Stratford, I realized, as I was doing a little look back at your early career. You were an understudy at Stratford, correct? Well, I was part of the Stratford company a year after they opened. No way. So literally the Stratford, the famous Stratford had

only been up one year? Well, I, I, they asked me to be there the first year. Well, I thought, well, you know, there's some stupid company going to be at this town of Stratford, Ontario. Yeah. That's never going to go anywhere. It's never going to go anywhere. And why am I going to waste my time? And I got a job in the summer theater anyway. So I turned them down and it was a smash success. I'll come back. I'll be there next year. Yeah.

You saw some amazing people come through, correct? That was one of the joys, to see these incredible actors. And some that the audience, that the American audience doesn't know, Frederick Volk was a great German actor who played Shylock. His whole career, not whole, but for a long time, his career was based on doing Shylock

I presume both in English and certainly German. Maybe he had other languages, but he made a career of Shylock. When you were an understudy, who did you understudy? Well, what you do there is if you're not the leading light, you play a part and you understudy. Right.

So I played whatever I played in those years and was assigned a leading part to learn and to go in. And of course, nobody ever goes in. I mean, when was the last time? The only time I've ever heard exactly.

I was there when What's-Her-Name went on in Pajama Game and became a star. And she was superb. The star never came back? Well, the star came back. It's not like football. That poor guy. What's-His-Name never came back. And has a winery now. So I understudied...

Chris Plummer. And my, my info is Alec Guinness, James Mason, Anthony Quayle. All those guys came. Wow. But what you do in one of those kind of acting companies, you rehearse a play for three or four weeks and then it goes on. Now you've got that play in, in rotation and now you rehearse another play.

for three or four weeks and that goes on and then you rehearse another play so henry v went on first and i was the understudy but understudy rehearsals would be held after three or four plays three or four months went by then they'd then they their their their schedule was to rehearse the understudies so they said so this famous director said all right chatner you're going to understudy plumber oh okay i'm going to do henry v

Nobody learns the lines. I mean, why do you learn the lines? Nobody goes on. And it's rehearsals around three or four months. I'll take my time. But this thing my book is about, Boldly Go, is about how I think. Now watch me control my dog by Boldly Go into your dog's brain. Macchiato, stop barking.

Well done. See? That was some Shatner-esque command. That's right. So my book, Boldly Go, is about our connection to the universe and how I think the universe can look after us if we are aware, whether it's prayer, meditation, whatever it is. I mostly think it's awareness of how we're tied into the universe. So something niggled at me and said, you better learn the lines.

So in addition to playing a part during the day from 10 till four and then going on at night, I started to learn the lines in this eight by 10 little bedroom I had pacing back and forth and learning words. Great. These huge speeches once more into the breach and all those kinds of things. About a week after we opened, Plummer got kidney stones. He went into the hospital. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder that afternoon.

i said could you guthrie wants to talk to you so i went to see teron guthrie he says can you run i said what i don't even know the names of the actors can you go on i never hear oh boy yes

So I went on. I didn't know the choreography. I had never said the words out loud. I didn't know the name. Who are these actors? I'd only been there a few weeks. That sounds like a reoccurring nightmare that I have, that I think all actors have. Exactly. And the nightmare came true because the play goes on and on with these great speeches. And then at the very end, there's like a musical coda.

And the King Henry V visits with the French princess and he says, you know, you're very pretty and I'd like to marry you. And she says, well, I don't know. And then the play ends. When I got through all those big speeches and I was at the little tag ending, essentially.

My mind went out. I didn't know what to, I went blank. There was a guy playing my part that I moved out of, the brother. So I'm thinking, the only person I know who knows what the words are, because we had a thrust stage and I couldn't seek help from the stage manager because he was way back there. I went over to my brother, put my arm around my brother at the end of the battle. And I said, what do I say? And he looked at me and he went, I love you, blah, blah, blah.

And I went, "What?" And then I walked back

The lines came to me. I finished the play and I was out of there. I have such anxiety in my belly hearing that. I can't. But it's also exhilarating. Imagine being able to tell that story and getting these great reviews the next day because the critics were still there. Next day, the papers were filled. Understand, it goes on. And I have this story that I've told innumerable times and I've hastened through it because we have a limited amount of time. So...

That's a story about how it's possible that the universe takes care of you. It has taken care of me. And I failed, essentially, on my first musical album. And a few months ago, I performed at the Kennedy Center to songs that Robert Cerno and I wrote, 70-piece orchestra behind me. I do an hour's entertainment performance.

People are screaming of music, tank. It's going to be a television show, I suppose, live at the Kennedy Center, an album that the London Symphony Orchestra has picked up. But this is the most important part. One of the songs, and what I thought of then as the big song entitled So Fragile, So Blue, about my trip to space and what we are missing. I'm going to make it into a music video.

Rob, you're going to be one of the people on the music video because the music video is what can we do about the destruction of our world? You spoke very movingly about your trip to space and it's so counterintuitive. I feel what you were left with when you came back. You were in sort of profound grief seeing our, as you say, our fragile blue little planet and it being in such danger.

And it sounds like it's completely ignited more creative passion. I've always been an ecologist. Do you think I'm going to get a chance to go to space? Yeah. Do you think I'm going to live long enough where it'll be like going up in a hot air balloon? Right now you've got to pay a lot of money, but there'll come a time when it'll be like perfunctory because what, what Bezos is after is to get industry up into space and,

a polluting industry. And then people live up there, work up there. And how easily, easily man nature revives itself. Chesapeake Bay was polluted. They couldn't fish anymore. Yep. They left it alone for 20 years. It came back there. Oh, it's unbelievable. And you see that all the time, Billy, um, white sea bass were almost extinct. And my son is a big, uh, fisherman among other things. Um,

And if you just leave it alone, just leave it alone. It, most things will come back in spades. Um, but,

But it requires people wanting to do it. It requires leaving it alone. Yes. Tell me about the liftoff. Tell me about the G-forces. What do we have to look forward to when we all get to go to space? There's a dial. You're lying back like this. You're lying like you are right now, a little further back. And they've kind of rehearsed you with sound and the chair because you've got to get back into that seat.

after you're in weightlessness and you think, "Oh, so I just put the five point harness." But when you lean back on a five point harness, I know you drive fast cars. So you've been chook, chook, chook like I do. See, I'm set to go and you tighten it down, you tighten it down, you're ready to go. So now you're like, "I've got a five point harness. I've got the left arm, but I float into the left arm. I've got the right arm on."

I got them okay. I got the waist. Now you got the between the legs attachment. So now you're lying back like this and you've got to put that in the hole where it belongs. And you can't find the hole.

Because you're back there and you're going, and they're saying, I got to lift off. And you're, oh, no. Are you hearing a countdown in your head? You're hearing a countdown on the loudspeaker. T minus 15, T minus 14. And then what happened was, hold the countdown. There's an allel. What's an allel? An animal? Something's gone wrong that doesn't belong there. An allel. That's the animal. Well, it might be an animal. Oh, my God.

And then what happened was the guys, okay, we got it. We continue to count down. All right, we're going to remove the gantry now. And this is what he said. And if anybody wants to get off, now's the time. I thought, okay, I'll go. Do they have an escape pod like shoots you off if it goes to hell? Yeah, they do. In fact, my understanding was they were rehearsing something or other.

And something went wrong and the pod was nobody in it. The escape pod, the pod containing the astronauts went off in the parachutes down and everything worked. So there was a certain sense of security there. On the other hand, they must have felt that about the Hindenburg. And the Titanic. You never know what's going to go on, which is referring to human error. So the G's hit you.

The G-force. The G-force hits you on the way up. Yes. I tried to raise my arm. I couldn't raise my arm. Boom, you're at the Kármán line. Suddenly, everything's released. Now, you're weightless. And everybody else was like, oh, weightless, weightless. I went to the window to see what was going on. Then on the way down, there's more. And more weightlessness, about seven Gs. And I'm thinking, oh, my God. I hope I can survive this. Are you seeing flames through the window as you're reentering? No. No.

you didn't say that with a lot of conviction bill well i was trying to remember what do you mean

Do you mean burning tiles? Yes. No, but actually, you haven't got a chance to look for flames because you're pressed back in that seat so securely. Is there noise? Oh, my God. Thunderous.

Thunderous noise, a lot of banging and booming, which is what they tried to prepare you for. So they played like sound things and none of it came anywhere near what the sound was really like. It was overwhelming, fearful. You know, it's what's wild for me is to watch you like all these questions are swimming in your head. Yes. Pick the first one out. Yeah. No, I can't because it truly is a remarkable, remarkable thing.

that you got to have that I can't even begin to, that I want to have, that I can't even begin to. I was sure if you made it known that you'd go up there because they send them up every so often. Oh, I would go in two minutes. And then when you land,

You land, I remember, you know, we always, when I was a kid, all the, the, the Apollos and things like that, we always landed in the ocean and I was blown away to the Russians would land in Siberia, but the, but the ocean is every bit as hard to land on as land is. And then you face drowning. So it's better to land on land. Correct. Well, I, yeah, I think the water is a little more giving. I know that the water is like concrete, but, but the landing, they've got the rocket comes back to, to earth upright. Yeah.

They got that technology. Parachutes deploy and you come down. And when you're within a very few feet, rockets go off to cushion the fall and you land. It's barely a bump. That's insane. I mean, I've seen, we've all seen the videos of it, obviously, but it's just absolutely insane.

That, to me, is the most impressive part of it and all of it is. Well, imagine this rocket thing and the big rockets are much taller and more prone to fall off balance. SpaceX's rockets come back and they land upright.

It's phenomenal. I have so many questions. It literally boggles the mind. I've done a lot of podcasts, so I have a lot of questions and stuff, but this, this getting you talking about space is, is definitely up there in the top, the pantheon. How many, how many top, what top five, one, five, you've done five better podcasts than this one. Talking to you about spaces is that would have to be one and two or, or just one. It's just one.

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Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Do you have any of your velour Captain Kirk tops around? Because you brought velour, and it was velour, right? I'm assuming, right? Yeah. Why does no one wear velour anymore? Velour is lost. It's velour, I guess. Velour. You know, you have to not eat lunch. How did you stay in such good shape through that run? Because that was like you were wearing tight, tight velour. Oh, for three years.

You know, should I eat that for lunch or should I not? Nowhere to hide. You're a big, like I am, I'm very much interested in new physics and things like that. Very much so. How did you find your way into interest in that field? Not so long ago, I was given a Lifetime Achievement Award.

and i said well who gets a lifetime anybody who lives anybody who exists gets a should get a lifetime achievement that's an achievement you you've achieved a lifetime exactly it's exactly my thought exactly what i said i mean if you live more than three years old i mean you're doing a really a good job so what's worth a lifetime achievement that you you did a good part you played thing you did a good podcast

you if you do a number one podcast maybe that's a lifetime achievement but other than that so i said maybe if i was to commend myself about a lifetime achievement i would say that i've spent my lifetime trying to hold on to the inner child that curious three four five six seven year old child that dwells in all of us many actors it's it exists in the forefront

And then some of us are able to bank it a little, but that curiosity about everything. Wow. Why is the sky blue? You know, how does this technology work? We take it for granted. If that's inexplicable,

What about a black hole or a snail? I'm obsessed with time. I'm obsessed with. I am too. How old are you? 58. And it's not, and funny, I'm not obsessed with, I don't think that I'm obsessed with time because it's a function or a result of me growing older and thinking about mortality, although that's probably part of it. It's just that the, our lack of understanding or should I say our new understanding of

of what time is and isn't, it just blows me away. I can't get enough. Are you referring to time-space? Yes, space-time. Non-linear, that time is not linear. I don't understand that. Do you understand that? I don't think that we are capable. I'm not smart enough, certainly, to be capable. No, everybody's smart enough. I mean, nobody has a brain that doesn't. I mean, the average person could if it were explained properly. For example, part of that

explanation is that things slow down at speed of light. Okay? So that if we were astronauts going at the speed of light,

There'd be no passage of time. That's insane. So my question is to any scientist, does that mean your heart stops? Your telomeres not grow old? I mean, what happens? Time slows down, but doesn't your body continue to operate in a, if it isn't 24 hours, which is an earth-made thing, can you measure time by your heartbeat? Well, how about this? What obsesses me is the notion that there actually is no

future, there's no separate future, past, or present. That all the time is non-linear. So the past is now, the future is now. We're in a dimension where we can only- That's all very well. I think, listen to that. That's very educated. Explain to me why the telescope, why the Hubble, and now of course the web, the Hubble telescope

can see 13.8 billion light years into the universe. And the farthest grouping of stars they can see is 13.8 billion light years. And it took 13.8 billion light years to come to our retina. So this guy on the Hubble, oh, look at that, it's 13.8 billion light years. I can tell that by the red shift. So far, so good? Yep.

Okay, that's 13.8 billion light years. So you've measured time. It's taken 13.8 billion light years for that constellation, that grouping of stars, to go in that direction. Of course, it's taken that amount of time to reach your eye, so it's now 26.27. You know, whatever the multiple is, if it was there 13.8 billion light years ago,

13.8 billion light years later, where is it now? Right. And you're measuring time. So no coming time doesn't exist. We're using time as a proof of how long the, how old the universe is. Oh yeah. So how do you explain that? One, that's, that is, is one of the three elements of time. That's the, that is in our dimension, understanding of time. That is a linear measurement of,

of truth, but we know in quantum physics that it's not linear. So on some other plane, it's circular. It sounds like I've smoked a lot of pot right now, I admit. This is the kind of thing that we should be listening to Jethro Tull and just talking. What it sounds like is everybody else who have asked to explain it. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

I've had arguments, faux arguments. What are you talking about? How can you measure when there's all this dark matter? Yeah, what does he say? And everything else. 90% of the universe is made of dark matter. And not only we call it dark matter because we don't know what it is. We don't know whether it's a structure. We don't know whether it's a cloud. We don't know anything about it. But 90% or more...

of the universe is composed of something we don't know what it is. How do we measure things? How do you say, well, it's 100 yards from here? How do you know that when there's a great cloud, a great curtain between you and what you're measuring, and you don't even know what it is you're measuring? What does he say?

He's like, I'm not going to argue with you, Captain Kirk. Right, exactly. You know, and he laughs and he's got a reasonable explanation, which I don't understand. It's simply inexplicable. Okay, here's my other obsession. Are you as obsessed with the CERN as I am? With the what? The super collider?

The CERN glass? Yes. Well, I'm obsessed with it. Well, I'm obsessed with it because bang and everything flies off into oil. Because they're discovering the God particle, they call it, and all of that. I mean, it's just – Higgs boson. Wait a minute. Because I know we're going to go down – well, we are in this rabbit hole. We're down the rabbit – we're in the wormhole, which is great. Yeah.

But I need to just jump out of it because we're going to go back to it, I know, because I'm obsessed with this. But I need to know, am I insane when I was watching Boston Legal? We'll go back to show this for a minute, which you're a genius in with my good friend James Spader. I love James. The best, right? Oh. The best. You guys would end every episode on the roof smoking cigars. And I'm telling you, I saw an episode.

I think, you tell me if I'm imagining this, where you walked up on the roof, he walked up there, he turned to look to you and took a big drag of the cigar and he says, where have you been? I haven't seen you all episode. I don't think so. I don't know. I was there. Did you ever break the fourth wall like that or am I losing my mind? All right. No, here's what happened on another occasion. You explain it to me. David E. Kelly. Yes. Wrote most of the scripts.

So he had this character I was playing say, cue the music to the director. Well, do I say it to camera? Do I say it to the guy I'm playing with? I mean, who do I say it to? I fumbled around. On the last episode, Kelly writes for this character to say, I've always thought of my life as a television show. Of course. He's living in a television show of his own making, and he hears, cue the music, and play the love song, and

And that was the explanation, but it came towards the end of the journey. So I don't think he ever said, I've been waiting for you all episode. I'm telling you, it's crazy enough to have written it and I don't remember. Listen, one of the things I love about you is you're so fun to talk to and you're so curious and interesting and love to speak and speak well. James Spader is equal. I'm surprised between the two of you, you got any work done because...

because my man Spader likes to talk too. I'd love to. Have you interviewed him? I have not yet. He's on our list. I'm dying to. We will get him. Is he a friend of yours? Yeah, we did a movie called Bad Influence together. How long ago? 1990. So that's 30 years ago. Yes. I spent five years with him. He was this wonderful guy. I just admired him so much. And when we left, I said, God, I've got to have dinner.

Yeah, man, I'm going to have dinner. And those are the last words I ever spoke to him. It's the truth. He is a true eccentric. I forgot what the conversation was, but he pretended to smoke a weed and smell flowers. He smelled the flowers. And then he did something with his face that to this day, what was that, at least five years ago, six years ago? To this day, I laugh at what he did.

portraying a guy under their influence smelling flowers. It was brilliant, beyond brilliant. Did you see him when he showed up on The Office? You will lose your mind. It's the weirdest, most bizarre, amazing, riveting. It like both did not work at all and at the same time,

worked magnificently, if that's possible. Does that make sense? No. You have to choose. No. But in quantum, but Bill, I'm saying, in my view of time, it worked well and didn't work at all at the same time. So they both exist. Yes. Everything exists. Everything. Quantum mechanics, isn't it? Yes. Two things can exist at the same time. It can appear and disappear.

That's what I'm saying. So there's a version where Star Trek ran for 17 seasons. You're still playing it in the velour. You're still doing it.

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All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel. ♪

Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton Honors membership required for 15% discount terms and conditions apply.

Meet the next generation of podcast stars with Sirius XM's Listen Next program, presented by State Farm. As part of their mission to help voices be heard, State Farm teamed up with Sirius XM to uplift diverse and emerging creators. Tune in to Stars and Stars with Issa as host Issa Nakazawa dives into birth charts of her celeb guests. This is just the start of a new wave of podcasting. Visit statefarm.com to find out how we can help prepare for your future.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Did you ever meet Lucille Ball? I did. People forget Lucille Ball, the production company, made Star Trek. Desilu, yeah. We were in the Desilu part of Paramount, which shortly thereafter they tore down the wall. Did you meet Desi? I don't think so, but...

The son-in-law and the daughter, I directed the son-in-law in the movie. He was wonderful. Lawrence Luckinville. Now, I feel like Star Trek and Lost in Space are the Beatles and the Rolling Stones of space television. That's good. I've never heard that before. Although Lost in Space, the producer of my show called The Unexplained, he was a brilliant man, Kevin Burns.

who loved Lost in Space and all the paraphernalia, knew the guy, the gentleman who played the lead. Jonathan Harris. And knew him very well. And Kenneth Burns was brilliant. How he could love that and Star Trek at the same time. I know. They're not comparable. But in today's world, where everybody has a crossover episode and actors cross-pollinate each other's, I would have given anything to

For you to beam down on a planet and run into Dr. Smith and that robot, I would have given anything. That was all so facetious, wasn't it? I mean, he just, he was talking like that. I mean. I think Captain Kirk would have stunned him with a gun. You guys were dealing with lofty, very lofty people.

and they were chasing around guys in giant potato man suits. It was just... That's really what I mean. I wanted to have a phaser so badly. And the only way you could... This is how funny merchandising has come. Can you imagine? You could not buy a phaser as a kid. No one sold them. The only way you could get it when I was a kid was a model. And

And you had to make it. And I'm the least handsy, hands-on person imaginable. I'd have glue everywhere and burn my finger. There's no way I could have airplane glue. Couldn't have done it. But that was the only way you could buy a phaser. And then nuts like today, you know, there'd be a thousand of them. You'd be able to buy every single thing you ever had. Well, there are, you know, all these sales and, and things like that where people make a lot of money on it. No, I do not have any paraphernalia whatsoever. What so ever.

Of Star Trek. Once you go down that road, where does it end? Well, not only does where does it end, why would you start in the first place? I'm on for three years. Oh, you're canceled now. Okay. So why would you take something with you? And they're, oh, geez. You know, it was never very popular, never greatly popular to begin with. Three years of declining ratings. And finally, they put us on a Friday night at 10 o'clock and goodbye, goodbye.

and that was the end of it for six years six years later it goes into syndication and becomes popular which really shows you never know you never know let me tell you about something you never know so i said okay i'll do an album so i said here's my concept i'll do pieces of classic literature

We'll put right music underneath it and segue into a song of that day, which was the lyric of which was good and was the literature of the day. So, for example, to be or not to be, whether the character Hamlet wants to live or not live, segues into it was a very good year,

with a guy i said when i was 21 and when i was 30 when i and it's a good very good year so this guy wants to die this guy wants to live and i thought and so there's music there's music there and i thought hmm that's a good so i did cyrano de bergerac the speech ends uh one of his speeches ends i may climb to no great heights but i will climb alone climb alone segue into a drug song where you can't climb alone well you need the help of a drug

i love it makes perfect sense to me yeah makes common sense so now i'm on the johnny carson show and uh i'm rehearsing and the producer uh freddie de cordova comes up he says no it's just six minutes long you can only do three minutes you want to do the literature you want to do the song i guess i'll do the song so now i'm doing a song out of nowhere and i look over at him and he goes

What the fuck? Amazing. And everybody laughed. And so it never did very well. But 30 years later, Ben Folds hears it, calls me, want to work with you. I do a number on this album. The album is successful. The number is successful. I'm back in the music business. I start doing albums.

And two of my albums went number one, a blues album, Christmas album. And I'm finding out how to do this thing of singing without being able to sing. But I have a sense of poetry and I'm doing the poetry with music and I'm there and it's working. And then, as I say, I get to Kennedy Center and the whole thing, the arc.

works. The universe is taking care of me. Your inner child is alive and well. So you're curious, you don't give up, you follow your muse where it leads you, and you do it long enough, and it's going to all take care of itself, I think. Let me ask you this. I always love this when I read certain actors' interviews or

A lot of times they'll be young actors and they talk about their career plan and things like that. What the hell's a career plan? Like you can, you can conduct your life. Like you have a plan in life. That's incredible that you should say that. I've said the exact same words. I have a career plan. I'm it's a sideways move for my career. What? Right. Look, look at all you young actors out there. This is William Shatner. No career plan. Okay. Yeah.

What does it tell you? Say work is the career plan. Yes. Don't do something that's detrimental, but say yes to something as well. I don't know whether I go for it. What the hell? And you know who else says the same thing is a wonderful man. I'm sure you've run across in the day is Michael Caine. You know, I haven't. I think I've nodded in his direction. But does he say that?

I had a great lunch with him about three years ago and we were talking about things. Why did you have a lunch with him? I was in London working. He was in London and we had nodded at each other over the years. Right. And we decided, let's get together and have a lunch. And he said this great thing. He said, when I came up in the business,

He said, I was not the best actor of my contemporaries. I wasn't the best looking and I wasn't the hottest or most sought after. But I saw people get fussy about their choices and they didn't work enough and they forgot how to act. I saw others drink their careers away and I just said yes and plotted around and did my thing and now I'm the guy. If something appealed to him even more

On the tiniest level, he did it. As opposed to, what does it mean for my career? And what does that say about me? And the last thing I did was a comedy. So should I do another comedy? Or I've done five Westerns in a row. So should I do a – all that bullshit. Such bullshit. I rarely hear an actor who knows what he's talking about say that. And that's wonderful. Wonderful. Because I woke up yesterday and I've agreed to do two things. World Wrestling Federation.

And we've had a history. And Snoop Dogg. So they said, we've got this award that we're giving Snoop Dogg. It's a belt. We want you to talk to the belt. And I thought I could read the dedication from my book and playing to the belt.

The live belt, which is going to be presented to Snoop. I mean, it just works. Listen, it's like so Seth MacFarlane is a friend. He created Family Guy and he has his. I know Seth. And you know Seth because he's obsessed with you and obsessed with Star Trek. You know he is. Yeah. So the Orville, the pilot script he sends to me, he said to me, I have a part I've written for you.

to come in and do if you want to do it. It's super fun. You would play a blue alien who ejaculates out of his forehead. And I said, I'm in. I'm in. I'm not thinking about what does it say about my career and, you know, does it make it? None of it. Mostly blues ejaculate through their ear. Yes, I know. Most blue. You must know a lot about aliens. Do you believe in aliens? You must. What does that mean, believe in aliens? What is the meaning of your question? Okay, let me rephrase it. You...

certainly must believe that we are not the only species in the universe. Statistically, it's impossible that we're the only ones. It just doesn't make sense. The billions upon billions of planets that will have some combination of what we have or not, they don't need oxygen and hydrogen to live. They can live underwater. They could live with methane. I mean, it's just

It's just impossible that we're the only ones. It's got to be. And life, the way life has this imperative to under a rock, under the sun in a cave and life, it just is a dynamic. Life is all over the universe. How could we be the only ones? Of course.

Of course. So aliens. Yes, aliens exist, but I don't think they've come circling this planet in a vehicle being shy about landing on the lawn of the White House. If they wanted to do it, they'd do it. I love how driven you remain. I love it. It's so inspiring. That's my job.

Gosh, I wish you all could have seen him. His energy, that is so inspiring. I'm so pumped right now. It's such a great takeaway, such a gift to get that. I mean, you know, there are so few like mentors out there and to have somebody like Shatner who's seen and done it all give you a nugget like that, super special. You got questions? I got answers. Let's hit the lowdown line.

Hello, you've reached literally in our lowdown line where you can get the lowdown on all things about me, Rob Lowe. 323-570-4551. So have at it. Here's the beep.

Mr. Lowe, my name is Brian from St. Paul, Minnesota. Big fan of your movies, huge fan of Mr. Traeger, and a huge fan of 9-1-1. So when I heard you were going to be in your own version in the 9-1-1 verse, I was very excited. My question is related to the 9-1-1 show. I'm curious how many

of the calls in the 911 office and the calls that the fire crew go out to how much of it is made up and how much of it is based on real life. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Can't wait to hear the next step. Hey, Brian. I'm glad you're loving Lone Star. We have a blast doing it. Yeah, almost all of the calls

And the rescues are based in reality. The writers spend a lot of time culling over news reports. And they're always obviously looking for something that's odd or different or things like that. But everything's based in reality. Everything's based in something that's happened. And then, of course, it's the writer's job to add a layer on top of it that makes it even more entertaining or even more bizarre. But yeah, that's the job number one. My son writes on that staff. So they're always looking for something crazy. Anyway, thanks and keep watching.

Hey, listen, I was thinking about this. I hope you guys are going through the little menu of all the past podcasts we've done and looked at them because there are some great ones. And you should know that these shows are all designed to be evergreen. So it's not like you're going to go back and go, oh, well, that was last year. It's like each interview is designed to be as compelling as possible.

whether you listen to it the week it comes out or literally years later. So don't forget. Go back and have a look at all of them, and don't forget to download the rest of the year. And I'm going to see you next week on Literally. Beam me up, Scotty. It's time to go home for lunch. You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Rob Schulte, with help from associate producer Sarah Bagar. Our research is done by Alyssa Grahl.

The podcast is executive produced by Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Joanna Solitaroff at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Stitcher. All of the music on this podcast was composed by Devin Bryant. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally with Rob Lowe. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.

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