George Takei is best known as Sulu on the original “Star Trek” series. Takei has been an actor for 55 years, but right now he’s focused on discussion social issues.
Takei is hosting a new YouTube talk show called “Takei’s Take” where he discusses current issues with guests. He tapes the show at YouTube Space LA and his recent guests include USA Today journalist Chris Woodyard, comedian Lindsay Reckis, Actor and YouTube personality Brittani Louise Taylor and YouTube personality Justine Ezarik (i-Justine). We got Takei on the phone between setups for “Takei’s Take” to discuss where entertainment has come since “Star Trek” and get a taste of the discussions on his new show.
CraveOnline: When you think about how “Star Trek” predicted the future, would you have ever imagined we’d have something like YouTube where we could broadcast programs like your show “Takei’s Take?”
George Takei: You know, frankly today we’re living in a science fiction world. On “Star Trek,” we had mind boggling technology. I mean, that was really science fiction. Spock had to figure out how long it would take us to go from where we were to Alpha Ceti 4 when you’re going at Warp 5. All he did was feed the information to his console and he got the answer. That was amazing science fiction then, but now it’s less than 50 years from that time and we have our computer.
That’s very real today. Or, we talked to people across the galaxy on that view screen. We’d see them and we could have a conversation with them. That’s our Skype today, isn’t it? Back then it was science fiction. We also wore this amazing gadget on our hip and we walked around with it all over the Starship Enterprise. Wherever we were, we’d rip it off, flip it open and start talking. There was no chord attached to it. That was mind-blowing science fiction back then. Now that’s a real nuisance in our society and it does much more than just communicate. We see movies on it. We text on it, which is going on right in front of me right now. So here we have these amazing things that were at one point science fiction, and it’s reality in our society today.
So science fiction of today eventually will be reality and maybe not so far off. Science fiction may play something 100 years ahead but maybe in 10 years that’ll be part of our normal mundane society. Technology always keeps moving us forward because the human animal is an inquisitive, creative, inventive animal. We keep trying to improve on our society and what we imagine in science fiction becomes a challenge for us to achieve in reality.
In your career as an actor, was doing an interview talk show something you’d been interested in for a long time?
Well, I used to watch talk shows, but it depends on the talk show. The subject and the person asking the question makes that talk show interesting. I used to watch David Susskind who dealt with both politics and social issues so I was fascinated with that, but there are a lot of brainless talk shows where people just talk about silly things. It depends on the subject and who’s engaged in those talk shows.
How did your interviews go this week?
They went tremendously well because we had two interesting subjects. One was on trolling and that is a big nuisance in our society, certainly in social media. People who want to gain attention by being rude or offensive or just simply outrageous, saying things that have no relationship to whatever is being discussed, they’re people with problems. Again we’re talking about technology versus the human animal. The human animal comes in many various guises and some are angry. They probably have a terrible life and they want to inflict it on people by using technology. So again, it’s the subject and the people engaged in that conversation that makes a difference in talk shows.
Did you and your guests come up with any solutions or productive ways to combat trolling?
Yes. I think the logical and simple thing to do, these are people who want attention so the best thing to do is to don’t give them that. I think when you respond to them, then you’re actually feeding into these trolls. They’re saying, “Oh wow, someone’s paying attention to me. I’m going to get back at this person” and they’ll offend you again.
So the solution I think really, particularly in terms of social media, it’s the anonymity of a situation. You don’t know who that person is so there’s no way of really getting at that person so you just ignore them. You have no other recourse other than ignoring because you don’t know who they are, where they are and why they are the way they are.
Who are some other guests you would like to have on “Takei’s Take?”
We’re doing the electric car as a subject because it is our future. We can’t continue to be dependent on gasoline which pollutes the air and which is a finite resource, and to discuss that, Elon Musk who founded the Tesla company and who also was a founder of Paypal and now is the person of SpaceX where the private sector is taking over where the NASA shuttle program was. He’s really an amazing guy. He’s really one of the geniuses of our time and he’s the one that founded Tesla, the electric car. To have him as a guest to talk about the electric car would be absolutely fascinating. However, someone like him is also very, very busy. So we have a journalist from USA Today who’s going to be joining us to discuss the electric car.
Are you interested in having entertainers on as well?
Well, if entertainers are engaged and active and have knowledge about technology, certainly we wouldn’t mind having them. Someone like Ed Begley, [Jr.], he’s very much concerned about the environment and he is an activist in that arena. So yes, he’s an entertainer, he’s an actor but someone like that who has a history of engagement with the technological issues, the environment, social concerns, certainly we would love to have that kind of person to have a conversation with on our show.
Having been in television for over 50 years, can you believe you can shoot a show and just put it online now?
We can do that, yes. Isn’t that amazing? That’s how much we’ve advanced in 50 plus years. Putting something on screen and sharing it with an audience was a major production. We had major studios that invested millions of dollars and took months and months to get a film out, and today we can do it in a day. Get an idea in the morning and then videotape it in the afternoon and edit it and by dinnertime you can have an audience of millions. So we live in a fantastic age now and certainly in my lifespan, from when I got my Screen Actors Guild card to this, almost the end of the year 2013, we’ve advanced so amazingly, it really boggles the mind.
If I can get one more “Star Trek” question in, when you did the episode where you were fencing with no shirt on, did you imagine that would be a clip they’d show over and over again throughout the years?
Oh yes, when I did the fencing scene, because I’m a visionary I said, “In the year 2013 we will still be talking about it and people will still be seeing it on TV, on your computer screen and your mobile screen.” [Laughs]
