William Shatner Doesn't Need Your Damn Cameo Role!
If you want William Shatner in your little movie, respect that he is the greatest actor in Hollywood and the most important thing since movable type and give the man a real freaking role! Director J.J. Abrams learned that the hard way when he tried to squeeze the living legend into some bit cameo part in his upcoming Star Trek remake. Abrams agrees with Shatner that he's too much man for a walk-on in any Star Trek project, but he just couldn't make something bigger happen for the original James Tiberius Kirk. "It was very tricky," Abrams told the L.A. Times. "We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn't quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn't want to do a cameo. We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves." The director was responding to an earlier comment Shatner had made about the newest Star Trek offering: "There is no need for me to know anything because I'm not a part of it." [UPI]