While William Shatner’s Captain Kirk has been played by other actors since his portrayal in Star Trek: The Original Series and the films, he remains most synonymous with the part. Shatner, along with his co-star Leonard Nimoy as Spock, became irreplaceable pop cultural icons and have forever been associated with the franchise.
Shatner, on his part, has capitalized on his popularity as Captain Kirk and has appeared at conventions and has produced and directed documentaries. He reportedly even had the bright idea of performing stand-up at a prestigious comedy club in LA as Kirk, resulting in him bombing on stage.
William Shatner calls his gig performing stand-up comedy as Captain Kirk as the worst
William Shatner’s role as Captain Kirk is legendary. While Star Trek: The Original Series only had a cult following and was hence, cancelled after three seasons, it found a resurgence in the late ‘70s and was revived with six films starring the original cast. Several spinoffs also aired, with The Next Generation becoming a global phenomenon.
Shatner, for his part, has capitalized on the popularity of Captain Kirk. He has produced documentaries, appeared at conventions, and finally also made an appearance on The Big Bang Theory as himself, constantly giving Trekkies what they wanted. However, one such Kirk-related endeavor seemed to backfire on him.
The actor revealed that he once was invited to perform stand-up at a prestigious comedy club in LA. In one of the most dumb decisions ever made, Shatner reportedly chose to perform as an overconfident Captain Kirk and intentionally did bad jokes.
While the idea was good in spirit, Shatner reportedly bombed for real and was embarrassed. He said (via THR),
It was probably the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Choosing to add bad jokes on purpose might be a way to game the system, but Shatner still seemed to end up with the short end of the stick with that gag.
William Shatner revealed the kind of jokes he said as Kirk
When one thinks of Captain Kirk, the most obvious qualities that come to mind are his leadership, agility, bluntness, and charm. Notice how ‘funny’ is not one of them? That is because Captain Kirk is not funny. William Shatner, on the other hand, is in many ways funny and has also done several comedic roles in his career.
However, even the best of comedians fail and when Shatner decided to perform stand-up comedy as Captain Kirk, it was a disaster. He wrote in his memoir about the incident and how it was embarrassing. He said in an interview with Trek Movie,
Nothing worked, that much I remember. I was trying for Henny Youngman jokes. All the standard stuff, it was all the old-time humor. ‘Take my wife, please’ kind of humor. My concept was, Captain Kirk wants to be a stand-up comic and tells the worst jokes possible.
He mentioned that he found the concept amusing, but he utterly failed in execution and learned the hard way that he could not pull it off.
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