FILM INTERVIEW: CHRIS PINE

Chris Pine Takes Control of the Bridge & Captains the USS Enterprise Toward Success

By: Emmanuel Itier

May 5, 2009

Emmanuel Itier: How familiar were you with the series before?

Chris Pine: I wasn't a fan. I saw reruns when I was growing up, and my grandmother was a big William Shatner fan, so I watched TJ Hooker...a lot. But I was born in 1980 so I was more of a Star Wars kid, and I'm not really a science fiction buff. I like The Abyss and I do like Star Wars, but I'm not an avid sci-fi fan. I got the encyclopedia and the box sets of the TV show. I tried to do my due diligence and started watching the original series slavishly, but then -- and this was a personal choice for me -- I felt it wasn't helping me do my job. I would love to sit here and tell you I know everything about it and...I just can't. It just didn't help me. What helped me was reading my script and trying to do the best job I could to breathe life into the character on the pages that I got. What resonated with me from the original show that I did get watching it, is that it's an incredibly philosophical show -- there are big ideas that are explored. In the '60s, there are the Civil Rights movements, the Cold War...and here you have a show with a Russian on the deck with an interracial relationship -- at least for one episode -- absolute equanimity with no regard to sex, class, race, etc. So it's this utopian vision of what the world could be. I never put two and two together and saw how Roddenberry was able to explore these ideas just because it was in space, which you could never have been able to do, had it been set in 1968 in a police station in New York. So I was struck by that.

EI: Did you get advice from Leonard Nimoy?

CP: No, my interaction with Leonard was more... He's quiet, thoughtful...he's almost like this stoic presence on set, and we'd just sit side-by-side and I'd read my paper and he'd read, and we'd share a few things. He's a very easy presence. It was very nice to know that we had the implicit blessing of Leonard just by virtue of him being there, like a chaperone or something. You could see, as he was sitting there looking off, he's been with this character 40 years. I can't think of anyone else in cinema that has that kind of longevity with one character, so he's seen the full arc of everything. He was there at the beginning and he's here at the new beginning, which is cool.

EI: Did you get to meet William Shatner?

CP: No, I never got a chance to meet Mr Shatner. I wrote him a letter when I first got the part and introduced myself, and essentially said that I wasn't trying to usurp his status as the original Kirk. I was just an actor and happened to get the part that was James Kirk. He was very kind and responded promptly and said, "Thank you so much and I wish you all the best of luck." That was the extent of our conversation, though my father, who is also an actor, strangely enough, two weeks after I got the role, did a Priceline commercial with William Shatner. He walked into the makeup trailer, so he told me, and patted Shatner on the shoulder and said, "Hello, son..." Of course, he had no idea what he was on about, but once he realized, he was very kind. My father also was in The Next Generation -- he's been in a couple of Star Trek episodes, so our relationship to Star Trek is double.

EI: Was he happy you got the part?

CP: He was very excited. Growing up in a family of actors, what's great about it is that they're very supportive and they understand what it's like to be an actor -- the rejections, the highs and lows...and having a common language with them is great because you have shorthand speech. They were very happy about it.

EI: Did he give you any advice about Star Trek acting -- dealing with the special effects while still trying to bring the character through?

CP: No, I just dove into the deep-end and tried to swim. The most difficult stuff for me was between the action and the computer graphics stuff -- acting with something that's not there was definitely the hardest stuff to grapple with. But it's fun. It really just requires the next step in your imagination. Acting is all about that. We can play out a scene right here, and then it's a bigger step to pretend you're in 19th century Russia. It's allowing your imagination to go that one step further, to take that leap. It's surprisingly easy because, as long as you just let your imagination go, it's a lot of fun, just like being a kid.

EI: Your mom was an actress too?

CP: My mom was an actress for many years, and my father has been an actor since he came out here [Hollywood] from New York in 1964 and was under contract at Universal for many years. My grandmother was a B-movie actress at Universal, and my sister was an actress for a while, but then she did a bunch of other stuff...so I've been around it all my life.

EI: You never felt like exploring another life?

CP: I really only got into acting because my English teacher my senior year in high school wanted me to do... We would read Waiting for Godot and then perform the first act as an English project. When I went to university, I went to a very large one and was trying to find friends, and I wanted to play sports but I wasn't good enough. So I found the theatre program just to make friends and find my niche. That's how I found it. I suppose it was meant to be because of my family.

EI: Were you at Berkeley the same time as John Cho?

CP: No, he graduated before because he's way older than I am. No, I forgot when he graduated, but we weren't there together.

EI: What was your vision of Kirk -- this new version of the character?

CP: This is Kirk - the early years, so Mr. Shatner never got a chance to play the early years, and I'm not going to get a chance to play...well, I haven't done it yet. What was presented to me was this vision of Kirk in the script as an angry young kid who is dealing with some heavy family shit and is angry at the world. He's a rebel without a cause. I think everyone can remember what it's like to be 15, and he's a 25-year-old 15-year-old! He has to mold all that energy and that drive and all that passion and obstinence and the spectrum of emotions into the man that Kirk then becomes, which is the captain of the ship. For our purposes and our script, this is the arc of this character from that kid presented with a challenge to the boy becoming the man he becomes toward the end of the movie.

EI: There's a lot of humor in this version...

CP: I loved it. I had the easiest job in the planet. I got to do everything -- comedy, drama...the whole nine. Someone like Zach [Quinto], that takes a real actor too. He's got to take those emotions and make them minimal -- to sit on them and play this sort of minimal acting, and I get to explode out into the world. The humor was really fun. I'm hopeful that it will allow people into this world that kind of think of Trek as this campy world where you couldn't laugh at all. It's a lot easier to buy into the drama with the humor. It can connect people to the characters, and J.J.'s got an incredible sense of comic timing, and he's the best person for that job -- to know when it's too much. Not being a fan, I didn't understand why it was so appealing, but it's an optimistic series. It's different from The Dark Knight or Watchmen; it's not dark and gritty and Blade Runner-esque; it's bright and funny and done with a wink. How can people not respond to that? I think it's pure, wonderful entertainment with a real sub-current of great ideas...but I loved The Dark Knight. This is a different species of film.

EI: I read you're doing Killing Pablo...

CP: Not true, unfortunately. I don't think it's getting made right now. Joe Carnahan, whose project that is, is doing The A-Team, so he's going to do that first, and maybe Pablo will happen in the future. I hope so. Joe is like J.J. -- a big, collaborative force on the set. He just loves making movies. He loves ideas, and they're similar in that way.

EI: You said the movie is brighter. Do you think it's the TV background J.J. has?

CP: Good question. Maybe... I think it's a virtue of the series. It's just not as dark. It could be his TV background, but I don't know.

EI: Could a Star Trek movie be dark?

CP: I think it could, but from what I know of the series...I see Star Trek as a... It can delve into the intricacies of psychology and the light and dark of it. It's not a component of the series. In what we've done, it's not a good match. There's high drama in the movie. Life and death things happen, but I guess there's always a pervasive optimism about the future. Humanity can prevail, and that we can overcome together. Through hardship, there's light at the end of the tunnel. You could make the argument for that about Dark Knight, but the world is just different.

EI: This is your biggest part in the biggest movie of your career. How will your life change?

CP: I'm not making any predictions and I'm not going to count any chickens before they're hatched. I think we made a really fun film. I'm going to enjoy every second I have, and we're going to go around the world and open this movie. We made a movie about people in space. It's a fuckin' movie! It's not brain science. It should be a fun thing. But I realize the fickleness of this business. I could be the flavour of the month or not for a month. Who knows what will happen?