Chris Pine Talks Captain Kirk

08 May 2009

1Comments | Comment on this Article

Virtual unknown Chris Pine was a shock piece of casting as James T. Kirk in J.J Abrams' Star Trek, but the role looks set to make him a star. 

Chris, could you just talk about your own relationship with ‘Star Trek’ because you were born way after the TV show?

Way after the TV show. Growing up there were re-runs on television and I’d watch those occasionally. And my grandmother was a big William Shatner fan so we’d watch ‘T.J. Hooker’ and old ‘Star Trek’ episodes. So it was on my radar but I wasn’t a fan.

Have you met Shatner?

I have not. I wrote him a letter early on in the process and just introduced myself. I just wanted to let him know that I was going to do my best to bring to life this part of Kirk’s journey and do justice to the wonderful job that he had done for 40 years. 

And he wrote me back very promptly and said, 'Thank you so much.' I wish you all the best of luck and let’s grab some lunch some time soon which we have not but he’s a busy guy. Actually my father, who’s also an actor, did a Priceline commercial with him about two or three weeks after I found out I had the part; so ironic, strange. And he’d also been on ‘Star Trek’ too, my father.

For someone who has never seen ‘Star Trek’, how would you describe James T Kirk?

James Kirk is angry, arrogant, brash young punk who is masking an incredible amount of insecurity and fear. He came from a broken home and is searching for something to do with his life. It is clear what he wants but he also isn’t sure if he wants to contend with the great shadow his father has cast over him.

The interesting part of the journey is his learning how to harness all of the emotions born from this conflict, from this misguided young man into the focused confident commander that he later becomes.  He is no superhero but rather an everyday kinda guy faced with a tremendous challenge.  And even though he gets beat down he always picks himself up again.

How did it feel to be in this huge big adventure?

I’m very excited and I have all the confidence in the world that it’s going to appeal to fans and non-fans alike. It’s overwhelming and its totally daunting but the great thing about J.J. making it is I don’t think any of us ever felt the pressure on set to live up to any kind of expectations.

Even though it is like 150 million dollars and it’s this mega, mega, mega tent pole film, he was always concentrated first and foremost on the relationships between the characters and making sure that those were meaningful because he realized that without meaningful relationships, all the effects in the world don’t amount to a hill of beans.

But as actors sometimes its interesting not only what they say yes to but what they say no to versus how fate works out. I think we actually talked about this before, that you were about to do this George Clooney movie too and it was which one are you going to do and the offers were coming in and for whatever reason you chose to do ‘Star Trek’ and the George Clooney movie fell apart.

Yeah, right. It was like the best times and the worst of times. That one week I happened to have the opportunity to work with George Clooney or do ‘Star Trek’.  I mean in a matter of a day my world had completely changed and it was a difficult choice with which I was faced.  I mean here I love Joe Carnahan who was going to do ‘White Jazz’ and the prospect of working with George Clooney was awesome.

So why ‘Star Trek’? Why was that?

Because in that week I really tried to do my due diligence and figure out what was more meaningful to me. On the surface my inclination is naturally to go to Carnahan and do the character part because I get to play this incredibly strange person.  I mean this guy’s a psychopathic latently homosexual homicidal maniac.

This is the James Elroy movie?

Just like awesome. It was just a great role. And then the James Kirk thing came to me, which on the surface is like the classic leading man and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that. But really upon looking at it further, I felt like for me that was actually the more challenging role.

It was actually safer to hide behind the make-up and do all that fun ‘character’ stuff. The challenges posed by playing James Kirk, by the prospect of doing a big budget movie, by all the pressure, by the fact that I’d be facing all this scrutiny, I mean not really pleasurable things to think about but it also made it exciting.