Hi Bill, how are you?

So good, man. You’re an American working in England?

Canadian. I’ve been drunk many times in the Shatner building (1).

No kidding. A Canadian who takes an Englishman’s job is banner headlines.

I’m fighting the system from within.

I’m doing my best in the same vein here (2).

In your new documentary about Star Trek: The Next Generation, it’s revealed that both captains had Shakespearean training. Coincidence?

There’s an aspect, a look of eagles, that heroes are supposed to have. A Shakespearean actor has to have the physical bearing and the attitude if he’s playing some regal person. So it’s a coincidence that both actors had Shakespearean training, but it may be a truism that the leading men in those days were traditional leading men, with that look of eagles that isn’t prevalent now. Now, all our heroes are flawed. Back then, the flaws were carefully hidden.

Who’s your hero?

Laurence Olivier was a hero, but he’s dead. Marlon Brando when he was young. Medicine … astrophysics … maybe Einstein. Given his background, what he discovered when he was young, how he led his life when he was older … Einstein.

You said you felt a twinge of sadness when you heard there was going to be a Next Generation and a new captain.

That’s true. When they said something else was going down, and they were stopping our films, I was enjoying the ageing process: playing a hero losing his powers, who had to be careful who he fought and how much he did. I was acquainted with all that, as a human being, and I was looking forward to painting that in the films. I subsequently did it, in the books I wrote. (3) Many of those Star Trek books I wrote are autobiographical.

What are you most proud of?

My mind doesn’t work that way. But as the years have passed, I’ve begun to understand how to act. I’m not joking when I say I think I discovered how to do it not too long ago.

At a certain point in your career you seemed to embrace the cult of Shatner. I’m asked frequently - just the other day, in fact: “We’ve got a character called Shatner, with these characteristics, could you play it?” I’m no longer interested in playing a character called William Shatner. If they named it something else, and it had those characteristics, whatever they are - and they vary - I’d look at it. I saw people were having fun with the way I apparently speak, but I don’t actually speak that way. If I spoke that way in Star Trek, it was because I was trying to remember what happened next.

Your delivery of Common People (4) is what makes it, for me, the definitive version.

That song gave me an insight into rock’n’roll. I never got it before. When rock’n’roll appeared, I kept thinking, what happened to Frank Sinatra? But listening to Jarvis [Cocker], I suddenly came to the understanding that it’s pure energy, and that you build that energy, and at the end your total being is invested in the song. I’d never fully understood that before. But that song lends itself to what I do, best of all.

What other songs would you like to cover?

Well, I’ve got all kinds of things happening. There’s a comic book that isn’t a comic book – we’re calling it cinematic graphic art, somewhere between a comic book and an animated film, called Shatner’s Man-0-War.

That sounds amazing.

It is amazing. It’s spellbinding. Recently I also drove a motorcycle that I helped design from Chicago to Los Angeles, and I’ve shot a documentary about it.

What kind of motorcyle?

A three-wheeler with a 500hp engine.

That sounds energetic!

There’s a greal deal more. Terry Bradshaw, George Foreman, Henry Winkler and I are going to go to Asia together to shoot six hours of television time. We don’t quite know where we’re going, or what we’re doing. NBC knows. But they’re not telling us.

‘I’ve lost a dear friend’: Shatner with Leonard Nimoy. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

We’re now in a world of Kirk without Spock.

I’m writing a book about Leonard. I had a brother, whose life arc was so much like mine that we understood each other completely – our age (5), our birth, the same types of problems in our marriages – our careers arced in the same manner. We had a great deal in common, Leonard and I. And thusly we were able to understand each other. I’ve lost a dear friend.

I’m sure you know that a public figure of your stature has their obituary prepared far in advance.

I’m frustrating a lot of people, I think. What would I say in my obituary? I tried hard.

Would you ever run for prime minister of Canada?

No. I have a green card to live in Los Angeles, and I’m not landed in Canada – I can’t vote in either country. I’ve never voted.

Footnotes

1) The student union building at McGill University in Montreal, Shatner’s alma mater, is known to students as the William Shatner building after they voted to rename it in a referendum. The university does not formally acknowledge the name.

2) Shatner lives in Los Angeles.

3) Shatner co-wrote a series of novels often refererred to as the “Shatnerverse” books, based on the premise that Captain Kirk was brought back to life after the events of Star Trek Generations.

4) Shatner’s cover of Pulp’s song Common People, produced by Ben Folds, appeared on Shatner’s 2004 album, Has Been.

5) Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were both born in 1931, and were 83 when Nimoy died in February.

• William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge is released digitally on 1 August in the US and 3 August in the UK.

• This article was amended on 30 and 31 July 2015. An earlier version said “Shatner and Ben Folds’s cover of Pulp’s song Common People for Shatner’s 1995 album, Has Been, reached No 2 on the UK singles chart”. In fact Has Been was released in 2004, and it was Pulp’s original version of Common People that reached No 2 in the chart in 1995; the cover version by Shatner, produced by Ben Folds, did not chart in the UK. Also, the article originally said that Leonard Nimoy died last year.