Published in the December 2013 issue

Sunday brunch, Stone Park Cafe, Brooklyn.

SCOTT RAAB: You're my second Enterprise commander, but my first OBE recipient.

PATRICK STEWART: Oh?

SR: Should I have said "Sir"?

PS: That honorific is mostly discouraged in my profession. When I was sent a program to look at for the Waiting for Godot production, I had to say, "Guys, get this off." Actors do not use that title.

SR: Is there an OBE discount, like AARP?

PS: No.

SR: Nothing?

PS: Nothing at all.

SR: What do you recommend?

PS: I'm going to go with the short-rib hash and eggs.

SR: I'm going with that then. You look fantastic.

PS: I eat almost no red meat.

SR: You still have that newlywed glow.

PS: Laurence Olivier said if you have ambition to be a serious classical actor, you must be as fit as an athlete. For me, the breakthrough was going to live in California in '87. I exercised. I drank less. It was one of the things about California that had a positive impact on me.

SR: Do you prefer Park Slope, Brooklyn, over Los Angeles?

PS: Absolutely. When I go to L. A., I have a great time. But I can get on a plane and leave.

SR: Do you still have a home in England?

PS: I do. I have a place in West Oxfordshire, close to a little market town called Chipping Norton, famous for being the home of the "Chipping Norton set." David Cameron is the leader of the Chipping Norton set, and I'm continually asked, "Are you a member of this?" Well, no, because they're all extreme right-wing land-owning Tories who ride to hounds and all of that bullshit.

SR: Have you ever ridden?

PS: Absolutely not! I have been invited. I have a neighbor I like very much who, two or three times a year, will say to me, "You really ought to come out shooting with us. I've got an extra gun. And the PM will probably be there." And, well, that's all I need to hear.

SR: Do you ever go back to your family home in Mirfield?

PS: No. I have only one relative in that town now. A niece. But in the neighboring large town, Huddersfield, I'm chancellor of the university and president of the academy of the professional football club. I was up to a quarter past 12 watching a game against Blackpool last night.

SR: You stream it?

PS: Yeah. I was in Montreal shooting X-Men, and I remember thinking, 7:30, I've got to be up to listen to the game. And at 6:15, all the fire alarms went off in the hotel. I went to the window and there were flames leaping up in a room opposite my room. I was out the door, but I forgot to bring my computer. So I'm out on the street and the match is about to start, and I said to one of the firemen, "Look, are you a soccer fan?" "Yeah," he said. "My computer's in my room," I said. And he said, "You're not going back in there." So I only heard the last 40 minutes or so.

SR: I'm still learning the sport.

PS: I always used to say, "The great test for any girlfriend is Can she explain the offside rule? If she can, she's a keeper."

SR: Your new bride can?

PS: Sunny has no idea, but I kept her anyway.

SR: Were you ever an athlete?

PS: I played soccer and cricket. I was not very good. I was a good runner and hurdler, but at some point you say, "I will never play for England now. It's absolutely certain, no matter how hard I practice, I am never going to get the call."

SR: How old were you when that dawned on you?

PS: In my 20s.

SR: So you had maintained some sort of hope that long?

PS: Oh, yeah.

SR: You were that good?

PS: Not at all. You know that old thing of taking your boots to the game, because, you know, they might suddenly need you? I did that when I was a kid. I used to have my boots around my neck. Now it's much more like: Jenson Button [British Formula One driver] will suddenly get a bad headache when he's on the grid at Silverstone, and I will be called out of the crowd and I will put on his helmet and gloves and I will drive that Formula One monster around! I race a little and enjoy it immensely.

SR: Do you still drive a Jaguar?

PS: In England, I have my California Jag. I bought it in '89 — convertible, of course, because it was California. An XJ-S 12-cylinder. It's a monster. It's in my will. I bequeathed it to my son.

SR: Very nice.

PS: It's a sport you can play sitting down. Everything else just goes away. Has to go away because you need your concentration.

SR: In 1974, I was in love with a girl who took her junior year in Newcastle, England. I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company perform in Stratford.

PS: What was it?

SR: Macbeth. Between the Newkie Brown and the hashish, I don't remember much, but I think I might have seen you perform.

PS: You know who you saw? Helen Mirren.

SR: You had no role whatsoever?

PS: Not in that production. I've only done Macbeth once, which is the production we brought to BAM and to Broadway.

FAN: Mr. Stewart!

PS [to fan]: Oh, hello there.

FAN: Mr. Stewart, I'm a huge fan. I loved you as Sejanus in I, Claudius. That is one of my favorite series. Loved it. I'm a huge fan.

PS: My lord. Thank you so much.

SR: Does that ever get old?

PS: That's lovely. That's all I've encountered in the five years I've been coming here and now living here. I have never been asked for a photograph in Brooklyn. Never. I get handshakes, "Welcome to the neighborhood." This morning, after I bought my paper: "I live on your block," the guy says. "I haven't seen you before. So glad you're living here. Is there anything you need?" Anything you need?

SR: You were once a furniture salesman. What kind of furniture did you sell?

PS: Really high-end furniture. Hudson's, the best furniture store in Dewsbury. They quickly realized I was an asset, because I would station myself near the door. And I would make an instant decision as to what kind of salesman the customer would like to have. Did they look homely, middle-class, aristocratic? Did they look nervous or shy? And then I would pitch my sales. It was a kind of acting exercise. And I loved doing it.

SR: Were you ever close to returning to Hudson's?

PS: Two years later, because then I left drama school and I was about the only graduate from my year who hadn't got a job or an agent or a manager.

SR: Were you the worst actor in your class?

PS: I think not, because I got good roles in all the school productions. I was very miscast in our final presentations, when agents and managers come to see the talent. No one wanted to see me. And one of the teachers found me and said, "Why aren't you having fun drinking, dancing?" And I said, "I feel I've failed." And then he said that awful expression: "Can I be frank with you?"

SR: Awful.

PS: You should always say no when people say that. Always say no. And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "You're not a leading man. You're a character actor. And the next 20 years are going to be really tough before you come into your own." I was 19. That was more years than I'd actually lived.

SR: Your career path is kind of miraculous.

PS: It's crazy. There is no explaining it. Because all I ever wanted to do was theater. I had no interest in film or television.

SR: I wonder if endurance is a talent in and of itself.

PS: But I had such minimal ambition.

SR: Low expectations are a good thing.

PS: They weren't low expectations. They were high expectations, but in a very narrow field. All I wanted to do was Shakespeare. These other things that happened were just flukes. I didn't look for them. Never have looked for them. Even X-Men. On the one hand, it all feels perfectly natural that I'm talking to you, about to open two plays on Broadway in company with Ian McKellen. And at the same time, what happened? Wake up, wake up, you're still selling furniture. You've got to get to work. The bus will leave in ten minutes. Crazy. Wacky.

SR: Maybe you learned a certain resiliency because of the misery brought about by your father's drinking. You hung in there, and you get credit for the series of events that have preceded your sitting down for brunch here today.

PS: You've just reminded me of a speech right at the end of Waiting for Godot, where Didi says, "We have kept our appointment." And I can feel it emotionally now. How many other people can say as much? We kept our appointment. That came from my father. Friday nights to Sunday nights, he was drunk. Monday morning, he was there. He never let the family down in that respect, and a lot of drunks do. He worked and worked, and then from Friday night he made our lives miserable. But Monday through Friday, he did his job. And he hung in. And then on Friday, he escaped.

SR: Did he ever see you perform?

PS: They both did. They saw me go as far as good roles with the Royal Shakespeare.

SR: Did he express pride?

PS: My father was only interested when we were successful. If we were playing cricket well, he would come and watch. If we weren't, he wouldn't. When I got a monthly rep at the RSC, then he was interested. I wish like hell my parents could have shared in some of the Star Trek stuff. My father believed that military service was a good thing. It had made him a star. And so he would have got a big kick out of being with me here and hearing people cry out, "Hey, Captain, how you doing?" … I have talked too much. You haven't asked many questions.

SR: I have a question. Why do you follow Tracy Morgan on Twitter?

PS: Why?

SR: He's very hyperkinetic and strange.

PS: He's remarkable.

SR: Do you know each other?

PS: I don't know him. I know very few comedians. My current hero is Louis C. K. Comedy is what I'd like to do next. A couple of years ago, I was asked, "How would you like to be remembered?" And my answer was "That I was very funny." If I could take a step into the world of comedy in some form…

SR: The video you posted on Twitter in which you're teaching your new bride the "quadruple take" was genuine comedy. I'm watching it and thinking, He's high.

PS: I think that has raised my profile with my grandchildren more than anything else. And I was not high. We had been drinking a bottle of Domaine Tempier rosé from Provence, France. And it was late afternoon on Sunny's parents' porch at their cabin in the Sierras.

SR: You seem so happy — in the video and here right now. But not content.

PS: Ian told me not long ago that right before a good friend of his died, the guy said, "You know what really pisses me off? I'm going to miss so much. I want to know what happens!" Unfortunately, that's not the way life works.

[Raab and Stewart finish brunch, walk outside.]

PS: Do you know where we are?

SR: Specifically? No.

PS: You see there's an old stone building there?

SR: Yes.

PS: August 27, '76. The Revolutionary Army will be pushed down at the Battle of Brooklyn, down this slope here. Right here. They somehow got around this stone house, because the English were in control of that building. And the Revolutionary Army was retreating to the East River, down through Gowanus, and they were being shelled from this point here. They counterattacked six times. They came back up this slope and retook this house six times in one day. About 400 soldiers — mostly from Maryland—held a defensive line here while the remnants of the army crossed the East River into Manhattan. And it was one of the great turning points of the war, because if they had been eradicated here, which they nearly were, that would have been it.

SR: How did you learn this?

PS: Sunny's lived here in Brooklyn for ten years and she loves history, so she knew about all of this. Furthermore, that building over there is the very first clubhouse of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

SR: Really?

PS: Before they went to Ebbets Field. They played on the other side of the house. There's a big open space there, and that was the Dodgers' first ground. Isn't it great?

SR: That's so cool.

PS: I love it. To think of those guys around here at that time. So exciting.

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