By Ethlie Ann Vare
BEVERLY HILLS, Saban Theatre (May 19, The Hollywood Times) – If there were ever two people who needed no introduction, William Shatner and Neil deGrasse Tyson are they. But I’ll introduce them anyway.
Shatner, while best known as Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk, has been an award-winning stage and screen actor for 70 years. He has written books, released 7 record albums (so far – he’s working on a new one) and at age 90 became the oldest person to reach space.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has been Director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium since 1996 (the first Black person to head any department at the Natural History Museum) but is better known as the host of Fox/National Geographic’s Cosmos and the science advisor to every science fiction movie you’ve ever loved… plus three presidential administrations.
So there was a lot of interest in spending two evenings with them. Indeed, the $1800 and $2900 “superfan experience” tickets sold out early. And no one was disappointed after hearing the first of these two-hour unscripted conversations between a couple smart, charming men with a wealth of anecdotes and observations. It was like a fly on the wall at the world’s best dinner party.
The pair had met over the years, as the Venn diagram between science and science fiction has the two of them solidly in the middle, but they bonded (Shatner calls it a Bromance) on a 2024 trip to Antarctica. The evening started with a mini-documentary about the voyage – yes, I now want to go to Antarctica – and then the pair took the stage, wearing casual clothes and seated in oversized rocking chairs in front of a skyscape. And they talked. And talked. And talked. That’s the show, two guys talking. And it was funny and involving and surprising and a total crowd-pleaser.
Shatner is unbelievable for a man of 95 – although he hates being applauded just for being 95. “Applaud when I say something intelligent,” he says. But his stamina, his memory, his agility compared to his cohort… all I can say is, #goals. Tyson, at 68, can still do pretty good belly dance himself.
Bill – we’re supposed to call him Bill – wants to talk about the universe and the meaning of life. Neil wants to talk about Star Trek. Tonight it was mostly about their personal lives, their career paths, the impact fame has on a person. They promised to talk more about life, the universe, and everything on Night Two.
Shatner grew up poor in Montreal, “the worst student at McGill University.” He fell in love with the night sky in the Laurentian mountains. Tyson grew up poor in the Bronx and never saw a night sky until he visited the Hayden Planetarium. They were both literally starstruck. Neil walked dogs for 50 cents per dog to buy himself a telescope. Shatner did summer stock. The funny thing is, each seems more impressed by the other’s milieu than their own. Tyson was starstruck (the other way) when he met Meryl Streep; Shatner was tongue-tied when he met Stephen Hawking.
Each took turns with their anecdotes, one asking the other for recollections as if they were on a getting-to-know-you date. The stories, which were surely carefully chosen if not rehearsed, still came across as natural and off the cuff. If you listened to them talk on KCRW or CBS, you’d figure they could talk to one another for weeks and never run out of material. I could listen for weeks.
Could I have done without the poetry recitations over jazz noodling over trumpet and piano at the end? Sure. But I’m willing to indulge two such charming men, who let us eavesdrop on their date.
