Star Trek's Patrick Stewart Admits He Was Wrong About One TNG Co-Star
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" star Patrick Stewart said he should have been more patient before letting his judgment cloud his thoughts about the youngest actor of the hit syndicated series' core cast.
Stewart, of course, starred as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the classic follow-up series to the original "Star Trek," which ran for seven seasons from 1987 to 1994. Among the actor's castmates was a young Wil Wheaton, who portrayed Wesley Crusher, the teen son of Gates McFadden's Dr. Beverly Crusher. Wheaton, who played a key role in director Rob Reiner's classic drama "Stand by Me" in 1986, was 15 years old when the pilot episode of "The Next Generation" premiered a year later.
In Stewart's 2023 autobiography, "Making it So: A Memoir," the esteemed actor said when he first started working on "The Next Generation," he felt a bit uneasy about Wheaton's character if not Wheaton himself. However, Stewart discovered that the young actor wasn't as wet behind the ears as he initially surmised. "I felt that the teen-on-the-Enterprise concept was a little gimmicky, but I was also put off by Wil's adolescent self-assurance. To me, he initially came off as cocky," Stewart recalled in his memoir. "But as I examined my feelings, I realized that they were not really about Wil or some notion that he should know his place as a juvenile actor — they reflected my own vulnerability. In those first weeks, I wished I had Wil's confidence."
Wheaton left Star Trek: The Next Generation after Season 4
One of the most refreshing things about "Star Trek: The Next Generation" star Patrick Stewart is that he isn't afraid to own up to his misjudgments. In fact, Stewart admitted that Tom Hardy proved him wrong after "Star Trek: Nemesis." The actor admitted in his memoir that he thought the then-relatively unknown Hardy wouldn't have a career because of his lack of social skills during the making of the 2002 film.
While Stewart put aside his apprehension about Wil Wheaton, apparently others did not. Wheaton said in the 2016 book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J.J. Abrams" that he wanted to quit the series after a producer tried to sabotage his career. In the book, Wheaton claimed he had to turn down a role in Oscar-winning director Milos Forman's 1989 romantic period drama "Valmont" because the producer allegedly said there were scheduling conflicts with a "Next Generation" episode's shooting schedule, only to later learn that he had been written out of the episode's script.
Wheaton appeared as a cast regular in Seasons 1-3 of "The Next Generation" before his exit from the series after nine episodes in Season 4. After that, the actor returned in a guest capacity for two episodes in Season 5 and two more in Season 7. No matter the issues Wheaton had with producers on the series, clearly there is no bad blood between him and Stewart since he reprised Wesley Crusher for the series finale of "Star Trek: Picard" in 2023.