Making It So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart (book review).
The title of Patrick Stewart’s autobiography, Making It So: A Memoir, aims squarely at Star Trek fans, but there are no Star Trek anecdotes in the book until Chapter 16, page 305. After that, he tells the story of making Star Trek: The Next Generation, both the TV series and the films, with a bit about the TV series Picard later. Even then, there’s still a lot of content about theatre, as it is theatre, darlings, that is Patrick Stewart’s true love. He worked for a long time with the Royal Shakespeare Company and adores the Bard. There’s nothing wrong with that, and there’s plenty of interesting material in this entertaining book, but the caveat for keen Trekkies is worth putting up front, methinks.
Patrick Stewart was born on July 13, 1940, in the small Yorkshire town of Mirfield while his father was away at war. Dad was away for the first five years of his life, and they were the happiest years of his childhood because when Regimental Sergeant Major Stewart came home, he drank a lot and was violent, perhaps disappointed by his loss of status back on civvy street. His behavior improved as time passed, but those years damaged his relationship with his children. Although they stayed in contact and had a cordial relationship, Patrick Stewart could never say that he loved his father. He loved his mother, though, obviously.
The opening chapters are a bit like the “Four Yorkshiremen” comedy sketch made famous by Monty Python. But it were all true. ‘And you try telling that to the young people of today, and they won’t believe you. They won’t!’ 17 Camm Lane, Mirfield was a one up, one down with a cellar where coal, milk, and vegetables were stored, and an outside toilet. The front room floor was old, cracked linoleum, and the fireplace was the center of the house. They were poor. Not “relative poverty,” but actual poverty—of not much money and sometimes not a lot to eat. Stewart narrates this matter-of-factly, not looking for sympathy and being positive about the good things in life. In particular, he appreciates the opportunities in amateur dramatics and the schoolteachers who encouraged his acting. He also has a bit to say about state sponsorship of the arts back in those days, without which chaps like himself could not have escaped their roots. The book is largely apolitical, but you can tell where his sympathies lie.
Sponsorship by the local council enabled young Patrick to attend a residential acting course where he first met Brian Blessed. He persisted with the lessons and amateur theatricals and obtained a scholarship to study at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. There, he learned more, worked hard, and graduated. He lacked the good looks necessary for stardom but found roles in repertory companies in various small towns for a while, and then passed an audition to join the Royal Shakespeare Company on a rolling three-year contract that just kept rolling. Stewart had mostly minor roles but earned enough to live quite well and managed a few bit parts in TV dramas and even a film with Rod Steiger called Hennessy (1975). I always remember his cruel Sejanus in I, Claudius, torturing poor old Piso (actor Stratford Johns), ‘Revive him. Begin again.’
It’s amusing that our hero had never heard of Gene Roddenberry or Star Trek when he got the call to audition for the role of Picard. Producer Robert H. Justman fancied him for it, and even after the try-out, Roddenberry wasn’t keen. Still, he was in, and the rest is television history. It’s noteworthy that the only stars when the series launched were LeVar Burton and Wil Wheaton. The rest of the cast were bit players who had been doing small parts for years, rather like their captain. Stewart reminds us, too, that Star Trek: The Next Generation was expected to fail as everybody knew you couldn’t recreate the magic of the original series. I suspect they succeeded because they didn’t try, developing instead a slightly modernized formula that worked better with an ensemble cast. There are a few interesting Star Trek anecdotes and an insight into Whoopi Goldberg’s career, which I won’t spoil for readers. Buy the book.
I enjoyed this autobiography. It’s an easy, pleasant read, and Patrick Stewart comes across as an honest, sincere, serious but likeable fellow who appreciates his success and remembers his roots. He frankly records the ups and downs of a long life and, as the four Yorkshiremen rightly said, ‘money doesn’t buy you happiness.’ At the peak of his career, he was deeply troubled because his personal life was a mess. Stewart includes the vicissitudes of his romances and marriages here, and they’re pretty much like everyone else’s in our time, though no less painful for those involved. ‘The course of true love never did run smooth’, said Stewart’s beloved Bard. Still, I always thought it a shame that Whoopi Goldberg never married Peter Cushing.
Eamonn Murphy
July 2024
(pub: Simon & Schuster, 2024. 480 page hardback. Price: £25.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-139851297-9)
check out website: www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Making-It-So/Patrick-Stewart/9781398512948
