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If you were one of those people who thought that George Takei aka Sulu had retired along with the USS Enterprise over 20 years ago, you would be greatly mistaken. Since then, and particularly after he eventually officially ‘came out’ as a gay man in 2005, it’s been nigh on impossible to avoid seeing him on our screens, or in the media, both newsprint and social. Now through Jennifer M. Kroot‘s new documentary, we learn what it really takes ‘To Be Takei’. Well, almost.Born in 1937, he and his family along with all other Japanese/American citizens were forced to live in Internment Camps throughout World War 2 after the US Government greatly overreacted after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It’s an issue that has stayed with Takei all his life and he was part of the political movement that successfully petitioned the Government for an official apology and retribution It is also something he lectures on at Universities to this day.
This may have been the reason that he quickly developed into being such a consummate and passionate politician from helping Tom Bradley get elected as LA’s first African/American Mayor, to his own failed attempt to get a seat in the California State Senate up to his current role acting as a spokesman for H.R.C.’s Coming Out Project.
With Takei’s assistance, Kroot traces his early acting roles playing stereotyped Asian characters to his co-starring role against John Wayne in ‘The Green Berets’ in 1968. By that time he had started playing Sulu in the Star Trek franchise which kept him busy right up to his last movie in 1991 and by then his character had been promoted to Captain.
One of the odd facts that Kroot uncovers almost by accident is that despite working with the Star Trek team for almost 25 years, Takei appears to only have remained friends with two of them i.e. Nichelle Nichols & Walter Koenig. Kroot touches on the rather bizarre public row that Takei had with William Shatner over his wedding but still leaves us in some doubt as to whether the two loathed each other as much as they spouted on camera.
When Takei finally announced to the world that he was gay he was already 68 years old and had been with his partner Brad Altman (his junior by 20 years) for almost eighteen years. After being so carefully closeted for most of his life, Takei did a 360 deg turn and became a very vocal supporter of gay rights. As gay activist Dan Savage commented Takei had left it a very long time, but at least now he was out, he was making a difference for others.Takei and Altman got married in a glare of publicity in 2008 in California before the passing of Prop 8 made same-sex marriage illegal again. Altman is the yin to Takei’s yang. Quiet, shy, reserved with an obsession for detail, he is the one who insures that ‘Takei’, no longer on the Enterprise, is in fact a whole enterprise himself. As de facto Manager he makes sure that his husband’s celebrity life runs like clockwork and that all Takei has to do is turn up and turn on the charm. It is however Altman (or Brad Takei as he prefers to be called) who is the one who lets his guard down on camera, albeit reluctantly, and we get a real glimpse of what makes him tick.
The charming and immensely likable Takei with his admirably whole crusading works on the other hand is always the consummate actor who never, even in his downtime moments, will stray from the ‘script’. In the way that we see him giving the same eloquent and moving speeches to various bodies either about his Internment experiences or about Gay Rights, he never once veers even slightly off the written text.
He doesn’t hide the fact that he always wants to be the star and the center of attention, and thus his diary is full to brimming. Hence amongst some of his public campaigning, and his autographing sessions at Sci-Fi Fairs there are a few questionable gigs such as appearing on the British TV version of ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here‘. He also may appear on Broadway soon if the musical ‘Allegiance‘ based on his own internment story, gets picked up.
Takei has now turned his hand to Social Media and his daily outpouring of jokes and funny pictures has made him an unlikely Facebook phenomenon with some 57K followers. He is a man who seems never to stop laughing, often quite nervously, something that his husband picked up on camera and challenged him on at one point. Takei missed his chance and just laughed it off. It is a pity as it would have been nice just to see him with his guard down just once.
Even if you never saw Commander Sulu steering that Spaceship for all those years, this is still a fascinating look at an engaging and charismatic man who never stops performing.
Review : Roger Walker-Dack
Editor in Chief : Queerguru
Member of G.A.L.E.C.A. (Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association) and NLGJA The Association of LGBT
Journalists. and The Online Film Critics Society. Ex Contributung Editor The Gay Uk &Contributor Edge Media
Former CEO and Menswear Designer of Roger Dack Ltd in the UK
one of the hardest-working journalists in the business' Michael Goff of Towleroad
