A reason to like Bill Shatner

[jmtorres]

jacquez's favorite characters of color post for IBARW mentioned Uhura, and made me remember something I wanted to post about from the Scifi museum (attached to the Experience Music Project) in Seattle. I watched about a 3-minute clip of Nichelle Nichols talking about shooting that first interracial kiss. This is going to be largely paraphrased, but here's what I remember about what she said about it:

So they got the script, and in the original script, it was going to be Uhura and Spock who were forced to kiss, and Shatner said, "Oh, no. No no no no no no. If anyone's going to kiss Nichelle, it's going to be m--I mean, if anyone's going to kiss Uhura, it's going to be Captain Kirk." The script was changed to this effect, and Shatner came around suggesting they rehearse, and Nichols laughed him off saying he'd never wanted to rehearse anything in his life.

Then when they actually shot the thing--this shot was the last shot on a day of shooting. They went through all the dialogue and Shatner dipped her and they struggled and they kissed, and the director said, "CUT! Oh my God, what are you doing?" And Shatner said, "I'm doing the scene, what you mean, what am I doing?" The director said, "You can't kiss her!" and Shatner said, "Why not? It's right there in the script!" And the director kind of went, "Because, you know," with a not-at-all-discreet nod at Nichols.

Nichols recalls Shatner and the episode director having an embarrassingly long argument that she wanted no part of, and eventually Gene Roddenberry was called down--she said he was forever having to deal with trouble she got into through no fault of her own--and the suits from Paramount, who were in a bit of bind because they'd okayed the script with the kiss in it.

Gene Roddenberry said, "Let's shoot it both ways," which apparently he did quite a lot, so they agreed to that. They had about 30 minutes of shooting time left and Shatner said, "Well, let's do the kiss version first," and the director agreed to that, so they did take after take of kisses and finally the director said, "Bill, what are you doing, we have to shoot it without the kiss." Shatner said, "Oh, why didn't you say so," and went on to do the take without the kiss.

The next day they all went to watch the dailies--Nichols said dailies were usually boring and she never went, but she went to this--and so they watched kiss after kiss after kiss, and finally, on the last take, Shatner swung her straight on rather than to the side, and stared cross-eyed into the camera.

Nichols said everyone was silent for a minute, and she was trying not to laugh, and then one of the suits said, "What the hell, screw the south. Go with the kiss."