What Ended William Shatner & Leonard Nimoy’s Friendship
Their friendship ended and was not repaired before Leonard Nimoy's death.
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy will forever be immortalized as Captain James Tiberius Kirk and Mr. Spock. They were rivals, they were friends, and Mr. Shatner called Mr. Nimoy the “only friend” that he ever had. Their relationship spanned some fifty-odd years marked with many up and downs that sadly ended when Nimoy died in 2015. Shatner and Nimoy hadn’t spoken to each other in the five years before Leonard passed.
What happened between William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy? How did their relationship go through so many twists and turns? Here’s the true story of what happened between Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner.
In 2012 Leonard Nimoy Ended His Friendship With William Shatner
In the book Boldly Go: Reflections On A Life Of Awe And Wonder, William Shatner reveals his relationship with Leonard Nimoy was strained before his friend’s death. In the book Shatner claims it happened as a result of a documentary Shatner filmed in 2012, called The Captains.
It was a feature-length story that saw Shatner both write and direct and told the story of all the Captains in the Star Trek universe. Shatner interviewed the likes of Sir Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula, and Chris Pine. He also spoke with other Star Trek veterans such as Christopher Plummer, Rene Auberjonois, John de Lancie, Jonathan Frakes, Walter Koenig, and Robert Picardo.
“One of my greatest regrets is that Leonard and I were not as close as we had been during those last few years of his life.”
William Shatner filmed convention footage for the movie, mostly of himself. At the time Nimoy was present and so ended up in the footage, and Shatner never asked his friend for permission to put him on camera. Bill says his friend was upset backstage but claims his usage of the footage wasn’t intended to offend. In the book, Shatner says, “Anything with Leonard would have been incidental, and we weren’t going to use it.“
But the one person Bill Shatner could not get to agree to be in the documentary was Leonard Nimoy. According to Mr. Shatner, Nimoy’s refusal was not given a reason. Mr. Nimoy simply didn’t do it. “I thought he was kidding,” Shatner said. “It was such a small thing.” So, instead of agreeing to Mr. Nimoy’s wishes, Shatner’s cameraman filmed Leonard Nimoy at a convention appearance in secret. The footage he shot was used by Shatner in the documentary and without Nimoy’s permission. Although Shatner felt it was a small deal, Nimoy did not. The two never spoke again after that.
“I have had a deep love for you, Leonard—for your character, your morality, your sense of justice, your artistic bent. You’re the friend that I have known the longest and the deepest.”
Leonard Nimoy Said His Relationship With William Shatner Was Over In His Final Interview
In one of Leonard Nimoy’s final interviews on television, he was speaking with Piers Morgan in 2014. When Morgan asked him if he had seen Shatner, he replied, “Not in a while… we don’t have that kind of relationship anymore. We used to.”
Shatner says that he had tried over the following years since The Captains to reach out to Nimoy, but all attempts failed. He said his final letter to Leonard Nimoy read: “I have had a deep love for you, Leonard—for your character, your morality, your sense of justice, your artistic bent. You’re the friend that I have known the longest and the deepest.” This letter never got a response and Shatner is not aware if Nimoy actually read it.
Leonard Nimoy Never Gave Us His Side Of Their Falling Out, But Illness May Have Contributed
We don’t know what Leonard Nimoy’s side of the story is. He never told anyone why he stopped speaking to Shatner after decades of friendship. And if there’s a reason that William Shatner knows of besides that strange convention tale, he has hidden it.
In the book Boldly Go, Bill Shatner speculates that Nimoy’s illness, which began shortly before their falling out, may have contributed to their inability to end the feud. Leonard Nimoy was suffering from a lung condition which caused breathing difficulties. As a result, he began to withdraw from public life and from contact with family and friends.
Given their 50-year friendship had always had ups and downs, its easy to imagine that the pair might have buried the hatchet had Leonard been in better health before his death.
William Shatner And Leonard Nimoy Were Friends For Decades Before Their Falling Out
The one thing that cannot be denied is the affection both Mr. Shatner and Mr. Nimoy had for each other. Their friendship spanned some 50 years and was put into book form with Mr. Shatner’s book, Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man. Although written from Mr. Shatner’s point of view, it is easy to see that both men cared deeply for each other.
It was a complicated relationship that was 50 years in the making. They survived the original TV series and the animated series. They survived the countless Star Trek conventions. They survived the 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture only to go on and star in five more Star Trek movies, two of which Leonard Nimoy directed and one in which William Shatner directed.
Yes, they were friends and held each other in the highest regard, until they didn’t.
Shatner Deeply Regrets The End Of Their Friendship
In the book Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship With A Remarkable Man, William Shatner says he’s filled with regret over the way his relationship with Leonard Nimoy ended.
He says, “One of my greatest regrets is that Leonard and I were not as close as we had been during those last few years of his life… it is heartbreaking, heartbreaking. It is something I will wonder about, and regret, forever.”
Bill Shatner now claims that he was approached by Nimoy’s daughter, Julie, after Leonard’s passing. He says Julie told him of her father: “‘He really loved you.’ And that moved me to tears.”
Others Involved Believe William Shatner Was Jealous Of Leonard Nimoy
If you were to ask Mr. Shatner if it was jealousy that may have started what happened between William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, he’d say absolutely not. But if you ask castmates from the original series, then you’d get a resounding yes.
While the two would later say they were friends and did generally get along while filming Star Trek in the 60s, their relationship was a rocky one. There were well-known arguments between the two while filming Star Trek.
Nearly every castmate of the two men would end up claiming ego played a part in the early dust-ups between Mr. Shatner and Mr. Nimoy. George Takai, who played Sulu and who still holds a healthy grudge himself with Mr. Shatner, says Mr. Nimoy’s growing popularity as the series wore on was a massive blow to Mr. Shatner’s ego.
As Mr. Takei put it on the podcast David Tennant Does a Podcast With…, “It got more and more intense. How do I put it? It began from the TV series. There was one character whose charisma and whose mystery was like a magnet. It was Spock, the strange alien with pointy ears. That intrigued the audience and women thought ‘I’m the one who can arouse him.’ His fan letters were this many, and Leonard’s were that many, and that created a tension, that insecurity [within Shatner].” This is something that Mr. Takei has maintained for years, much to the annoyance of Mr. Shatner.
Mr. Takei’s claims finally got the best of Mr. Shatner. He took to Twitter to air his grievances by saying, “George needs a new hobby. Now he’s making things up. We never saw fan letters. That’s why there’s so many secretary signed photos. We barely saw George. He was in once a week at most-how would he know anything? The only person with jealousy is George.”
To William Shatner’s credit, he did eventually come clean and say that there was some tension early on, though he said his issues were never directed at Leonard Nimoy, but at the direction of the show.
I would think that any clashes that we had in the beginning,” he admitted to The Hollywood Reporter, “…you know it was so long ago that I am forced to try and re-create what fireworks that might have been. I don’t remember any fireworks, I remember going to the producers and wondering whether they were going to change the thrust of the show as a result of the popularity of Spock. So my anxieties were never directed at Leonard per se, it was about “How was the show going to go?”
Shatner And Nimoy Were Born Four Days Apart And Had Ukrainian Roots
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy share a few commonalities. The first is that both men were born in March of 1931, with Shatner being older by a mere four days. Although Bill Shatner was born in Montréal, Québec, Canada, and Lenny Nimoy in Boston, Massachusetts, they were more alike than you may imagine. Both men were born into Jewish households whose families immigrated from Ukraine.
Their First Time On Screen Together Was In The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy first met in 1964 on an episode of the hit series, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. It was a quick meeting with the two not sharing much screen time. In his book Leonard, My Fifty-Year Friendship With A Remarkable Man, William Shatner says that neither actually remembered their meeting on the show, but you can see them on screen together in the 1964 Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode “The Project Strigas Affair.”
In that episode, Nimoy portrayed the villain Vladeck, while Shatner was the U.N.C.L.E. recruit Michael Donfield.
William Shatner And Leonard Nimoy’s Early Careers Were Very Similar
Both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy began acting the same year. Shatner got his Hollywood start in 1951 playing a crook in the film The Butler’s Night Off while Nimoy began his career with the film playing Chief in Queen for a Day.
The very first episode of Star Trek wasn’t going to be seen for 15 more years but both were out there working in the same town in the same business.
For Shatner, it was all about visibility. His initial goal was to get into movies, but he found himself more and more taking on guest roles on various television series. He was seen on Omnibus, Studio One, Nero Wolfe, and even Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Shatner also found time on Outlaws, Naked City, and The Doctors and the Nurses, and in 1960 he made his very first appearance on The Twilight Zone. But it was the second appearance on the series that he may be known for best. It was in 1963 and the episode was titled Nightmare at 20,000 Feet where he played Bob Wilson, a man who recently recovered from a nervous breakdown and is convinced that there is a monster on the wing of the airplane he is flying in.
For Nimoy, he enjoyed the same career path as Shatner. In fact, after his uncredited appearance in the 1954 film Them!, Leonard appeared in only two other films (The Balcony, Deathwatch) before Star Trek. Until his 1966 pilot premiere as Mr. Spock, Leonard Nimoy was seen in countless television series that included such popular shows as Highway Patrol, Dragnet, Sea Hunt, Bonanza, Rawhide, Wagon Train, Perry Mason, Death Valley Days, Get Smart, and Gunsmoke. During this time, there doesn’t appear to be anything that would affect what happened between William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
They First Became Friends In 1966 On The Set Of Star Trek
It was on the set of Star Trek that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy really got to know each other. The two soon became friends. Their friendship deepened over time, as they made movies and attended conventions together.
William Shatner Fought Leonard Nimoy On Screen, But At The Time They Were Friends
Season two of Star Trek premiered in 1967 with the episode Amok Time. Maybe this was a precursor for what eventually happened between William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. In the episode, Mr. Spock was going through the throes of his Pon Farr mating period and had to return to Vulcan where he was to meet with his future bride. As Spock explains, if he doesn’t get to Vulcan to mate with her, he will die. Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy are invited to witness the marriage ritual, but things begin to go bad when Spock’s bride-to-be, T’Pau, says she would rather marry Stonn, who is a full Vulcan.
T’Pau then exercises her right to have Spock fight for her but instead of choosing Stonn, she chooses Captain Kirk instead. The fight is a fight to the death, paring Spock against Kirk. Immediately Spock shows his fighting superiority which causes McCoy to complain that Kirk is not used to the Vulcan atmosphere. McCoy is allowed to inject Kirk with a compound intended to help Kirk. It didn’t have the intended effect as Spock kills Kirk.
Spock eventually releases T’Pau from the marriage and sadly heads back to the Enterprise with McCoy and Kirk’s body. When he gets there, he finds out that Kirk actually didn’t die in the fight. McCoy gave Kirk a drug that made him appear dead. It was one of the very rare times that Spock showed genuine emotion.
William Shatner’s Last Time On Screen With Leonard Nimoy Was In A Commercial
Although the two never spoke again, they did find themselves one last time sharing the screen. This was in 2014 and it was for a VW car commercial. Rumor has it that the pair never spoke off-camera and any communication needed was done by their agents.
It is sad when two of the most famous TV icons, two who had shared 50 years of history, personal and professional, allow their relationship to deteriorate to the point of no reconciliation. One would have thought that as the end was getting close for Mr. Nimoy, the hatchet could have been buried, but that was not the case.
