"Patrick Stewart reflects on his life and legendary career in new memoir, 'Making It So'"

by Jeffrey Brown, Anne Azzi Davenport, and Alison Thoet 

[On the PBS NewsHour of 13 October 2023, Jeffrey Brown, the program’s arts correspondent, interviewed English actor Patrick Stewart (born 1940 in Mirfield, West Yorkshire) on the occasion of the publication of his memoir, Making It So (Gallery Books, 2023).  Stewart spoke about his start in the theater and some of the techniques he used on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company and his work on television and film roles.]

Geoff Bennett: Patrick Stewart cut his acting teeth in the theater, taking on numerous roles in Shakespeare and other classics.

For his second act, he became known to millions as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the revival of the "Star Trek" television and film franchises, as well as Charles Xavier in the popular superhero X-Men films.

Now he tells his own story in a new memoir, and sat down with Jeffrey Brown recently for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Patrick Stewart, Actor: Glamis hath murder’d sleep. Therefore, Cawdor shall sleep no more [William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2].

Jeffrey Brown: He would become one of the world’s best-known actors, and everyone has to start somewhere. And, for Patrick Stewart, that was the day a teacher handed his class the text of William Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice.”

Patrick Stewart: He said: “All right, Act 4, Scene 1. You’re all cast. All right, start reading.”

And, of course, we all went [Stewart mimes reading to himself and “zips his lips”] — and he yelled at us: “Not to yourselves, you idiots!”

And then he said: “This is a play. It’s people. It’s real life. It’s not just being on a stage. You have got to invite people into it.”

Jeffrey Brown: Some seven decades later, at age 83, Stewart invites us into his own life drama in a memoir titled “Making It So.”

[“Make it so” became a catchphrase of Captain Picard, commander of the Starship Enterprise as portrayed by Stewart on the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94). A standard command used by British naval officers to mean “Make it happen,” “Get it done,” or “Do it,” Picard used it in the very first episode, written by Gene Roddenberry, creator of the original 1960s series, and D. C. Fontana.]

Patrick Stewart: There was something about having those words, even though I was mispronouncing them, in my mouth that felt good, felt I was in control.

Jeffrey Brown: It gave you a voice. It gave you a self. It gave you a confidence.

Patrick Stewart: Yes, exactly.

What it gave me was that I could drop the Patrick Stewart.

Jeffrey Brown: What does that mean?

Patrick Stewart: It means that I didn’t really like who I was. And I felt much more comfortable when I was somebody else.

Actually, the first time I walked onto a stage and breathed in, because I was nervous, I realized suddenly I felt safer than I had felt in any of my childhood years. I mean literally safe. Nothing bad can happen to me on the stage.

Jeffrey Brown: As he writes, the future captain of the Starship Enterprise grew up in a tough blue-collar town in the North of England without hot water or an indoor toilet.

His first years alone with his mother and older brother were good ones. But his father’s return from World War II changed everything. His father, described as a weakened alcoholic, would beat his mother, and young Patrick could not protect her.

So, there is this mix of wound and strength, I think, that runs through your whole life story. Do you feel that?

Patrick Stewart: I do. I feel it in my work. I feel it in important relationships. And I have benefited from it and also from, oh, 30 years ago, when someone I knew quite well said to me: “Have you ever thought of therapy, Patrick, psychological therapy?”

And I said: “No, no. Why would I do that?”

“Give it a shot.”

And, thoom, I was hooked right away. And that has been one of the ways that I helped to understand my life, my childhood, my father, understanding, because he just made me angry and fearful when he was around. And he’s one of the people I miss now, because I’d like him to read book.

Jeffrey Brown: Stewart would work his way up as an actor from local productions to studies in Bristol, eventually to the heights, the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He writes of lessons along the way, including how great actors develop — quote — “an invisible cloak of truth that elevates their performances.”

The actor is both pretending and not pretending?

Patrick Stewart: I don’t like the word pretending, although, in a sense, pretense is partly what we’re activated to do when we’re acting.

But the people that you have mentioned, their performance, their work lives inside them.

Jeffrey Brown: A lesson he learned when a director convinced him to take on one of Shakespeare’s vilest monsters, Polixenes in “The Winter’s Tale.”

Patrick Stewart: And he said: “I think you’re fearful, Patrick, but what you must understand is that this character already lives inside you.”

And I was kind of outraged at that. And he said: “But you’re an actor. All you have to do is let it out.”

[It seems Brown made a mistake. In 1981, Stewart played Leontes in an RSC production of The Winter’s Tale directed by Ronald Eyre. I found no record of Stewart’s ever having played Polixenes, who’s a secondary character in the play, a sort of catalyst.

[In a Shakespeare Unlimited interview for Washington, D.C.’s Folger Shakespeare Library (Patrick Stewart on a Life Shaped by Shakespeare | Folger Shakespeare Library) about the memoir, conducted by Barbara Bogaev and posted on 10 October 2023, Stewart said that Leontes “is such an unspeakable character. I can’t, and I don’t want to identify with him.” Stewart said he spoke with the production’s director, who told him, “Patrick, this man lives inside you already. . . . All you have to do to play this role is let him out.”]

Jeffrey Brown: A whole other level of fame would come in his late 40s. While the actors strike continued, Stewart asked us not to use clips from his work on “Star Trek” or “X-Men,” where, by the way, he co-starred with Ian McKellen.

But fans well know how he, yes, commanded those roles with his voice and presence. In fact, though, Stewart himself knew nothing of this new world when he first came to it.

You were not “Star Trek”-literate, huh?

Patrick Stewart: Not remotely. I wasn’t even a fan. I wasn’t a fan of sci-fi at all.

(Laughter)

Patrick Stewart: And I still struggle just a little bit.

Jeffrey Brown: But you’re saying that, in these characters for television and film, you were able to find the same way in that you found to Shakespeare on the stage?

Patrick Stewart: Exactly the same.

Jeffrey Brown: The complexity?

Patrick Stewart: Yes, and making sure that, if the complexity was inside him, when I released it, it would make sense. It would be understandable. And I think . . .

Jeffrey Brown: To yourself, as well as the audience?

Patrick Stewart: Always to myself, yes, but, hopefully, as often to the audience. And that was always my objective.

I wanted to bring the audience into our world. I was never that interested in thrusting it out, but just inviting people to come in and share what we were experiencing.

[As Vladimir in Waiting for Godot] Say I am happy!

Ian McKellen, Actor: [As Estragon] I am happy.

Patrick Stewart: In 2013, he took to the stage, again working with McKellen, in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.”

[Stewart and McKellen appeared together in Godot in 2009 on a tour of the United Kingdom, followed by a West End run at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. The production then ran at the Cort Theatre on Broadway in 2013-14, where it played in repertory with Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land with Stewart and McKellen at the head of a cast of four.]

Ian McKellen: [Estragon] What do we do now, now that we’re happy?

(Laughter)

Patrick Stewart: It requires connection. And that connection isn’t made by yelling and acting.

There’s a wonderful American comic whose name I now can’t remember who was asked once: “What is acting?”

And he said: “Acting, acting is yelling!”

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown: But not for you?

Patrick Stewart: No, not for me.

Jeffrey Brown: There is one big role Stewart still wants to take on, King Lear. But, he says:

Patrick Stewart: Somebody, actually, the other day said: “You know, you’re a bit too old for King Lear.”

(Laughter)

Patrick Stewart: Can’t — can’t get it right.

So, I feel that, even though I may be too old to play Lear, I could give it a shot.

(Laughter)

[note: McKellen played Lear in the West End and on video when he was 79; Stewart is only four years older than that. (Lear himself admits to being 80 “and upward.”)]

Jeffrey Brown: All right, we will look for your King Lear.

Patrick Stewart. The book is “Making It So.”

Thank you very much.

Patrick Stewart: Thank you.

[In his more than 30-year career with the PBS NewsHour, Jeffrey Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe.  As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world's leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists.

[Among his signature works at the NewsHour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the NewsHour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[As Senior Coordinating Producer of “Canvas,” Anne Davenport is the primary field producer of arts and culture pieces and oversees all coverage.  She’s been leading “Canvas” since its beginning, collaborating with Chief Arts Correspondent Jeffrey Brown for most of her 21 years at PBS NewsHour as well as with others.  Alison Thoet is a writer and a “Canvas” associate producer and national affairs associate producer at NewsHour.]