William Shatner blasts claims he ‘doesn’t have a friend left’

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William Shatner is shutting down claims that he has no true friends and fears he will die alone.

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In a new interview with SFX magazine and quoted by Unilad, Shatner, 93, said “everybody is lonely” and that he’s “going to die alone.” 

“I’ve come to the conclusion that everybody is lonely. When you get older you think ‘My God… all those people I knew that I thought were friends are dead,’” he reportedly told the outlet. “I’m alone – I’m going to die alone.”

But he said people are scared of death, because they aren’t ready to face the prospect of their own mortality.

“You ignore it, you fill (life) with wine, women or song,” he said. “I think of all the meals I ate alone, and theatre companies when I was alone, I drink an odd beer, but the (other) actors would get drunk and be in a haze the next day. I didn’t do that – I was not with the drinking crowd, but I’d wonder ‘what are they doing? They’re drinking and laughing,’ but I wasn’t ready to drop that mask of ‘I don’t care.’ If that’s what friendship is, I don’t want to do that – it’s a waste of my time.”

After the comments went viral, Shatner, who has had a strained relationship with some of his acting co-stars, took to X to address the headlines saying that it was his Star Trek character “Kirk’s schtick.”

“Well, today was interesting. I received a call from several friends who had read on some obscure website that in an interview I did that I admitted that I have no true friends & I will die alone. Wasn’t that Kirk’s schtick? Don’t confuse me with fantasy here.”

He then made a joke by namedropping his pal Tom Bergeron.

“Although if Tom Bergeron calls me I’m absolutely going to tell him I said that!” he continued with a pair of laughing emojis. “This is ridiculous. So unless you are Tom, don’t believe a word of it.”

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As he ages, the Canadian-born actor has come to grips with death, speaking openly about it in past interviews and acting out Kirk’s own demise in 1994’s Star Trek: Generations. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t scared of it.

“As you get older, as I’m sure you can imagine, you think of death — it becomes more and more present … So when (Kirk) was dying, I thought, ‘How do you die?’ I’ve heard of people weeping, my father was incapacitated, he had had a stroke and he had tears in his eyes and I wonder quite often what he was crying about. Was he crying about leaving? I loved him very much and he loved me. Was he weeping because of me and leaving this world?” he said in a 2022 interview with Postmedia,.

“So I thought, ‘How would Captain Kirk die?’ Captain Kirk, who has faced death so often. I thought he would look at death approaching with the same awe and wonder that he looked at these strange beings that he faced in the years I played him. I wanted him to look at death as something filled with the awe and wonder that he looked at the universe. So the, ‘Oh my,’ was supposed to be a ‘wow.’ What came out had an element of dread, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t play it exactly the way I wanted to, which was, ‘Oh my, the gorgeousness of death. What’s going to happen?’ That’s the way I feel about it. That’s the way I want to feel about it. I don’t want to feel fear, but I’m afraid I feel fear.”

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