Star Trek: 10 Biggest Takeaways From Patrick Stewart's Memoir (and One That Wasn't)

1. Grampy Rabbit And Professor X

Patrick Stewart Book Memoir Picard Star Trek
Ashley Baker Davies

Not a combination that you might think of immediately but one of the early revelations in Making It So is that Patrick Stewart is very well acquainted with Brian Blessed.

Many years before Flash Gordon, Blessed would meet the future Enterprise captain during an eight-day residential drama course in the spring holidays of 1953.

Blessed, four years older than Patrick Stewart, made a dramatic impact from the moment of his arrival and the two would become lifelong friends. They would attend smaller sessions with one of the course coaches Ruth Wynn Owen on Sundays for some time. Wynn Owen offered a more "visceral" approach to Shakespeare in particular and would be a great influence on Stewart's vocal work in the coming decades.

Blessed would quickly go on to become a UK TV star and household name through Z Cars. In a strange twist, the two would only ever work together once and even then for a very brief period on the BBC's acclaimed I, Claudius. Blessed played Emperor Augustus while Stewart took up the role of the scheming Praetorian Guard commander Sejanus who meets a sticky end after only four episodes.

While it's not a huge role, Stewart is occasionally spotted, which still brings him a smile to this day.

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A Star Trek fan from birth, I love to dive into every aspect of the franchise in front and behind the screen. There's something here that's kept me interested for the best part of four decades! Now I'm getting back into writing and using Star Trek as my first line of literary attack. If I'm not here on WhatCulture then you're more than welcome to come and take a look at my blog, Some Kind of Star Trek at http://SKoST.co.uk or maybe follow me on Twitter as @TheWarpCore. Sometimes I force myself not to talk about Star Trek.