Patrick Stewart gets 'Blunt' with his son

Donna Freydkin | USA TODAY

Sir Patrick Stewart is many things: the legendary star of Star Trek:The Next Generation and the X-Men films, a celebrated stage actor, and a social media aficionado who mugs around with his buddy Sir Ian McKellen.

But right now, on this Thursday morning, the 75-year-old actor sounds like nothing so much as a proud papa.

His son, Daniel, appears in the sixth episode of his new Starz comedy, Blunt Talk (Saturdays, 9 p.m. ET/PT), in which dad stars as buffoonish, egomaniacal talk-show host Walter Blunt. In last week's premiere, he was busted with a prostitute, forcing him to rehab his image and resurrect his career.

"Daniel has a wonderful talent for comedy, particularly wacky comedy. So we shared an episode. Hopefully we’ll be sharing many more,” says Stewart, adding the episode deals with "serious issues" affecting their relationship.

On screen, the two have a prickly, stilted dynamic. Not so in real life. “What do you think, Dad?” jokes the younger Stewart, 48, when asked about their bond.

“This industry and the fact that we’re both in it brings up all kinds of bizarre circumstances," Daniel says. The lives we lead can be sort of ridiculous. My upbringing wasn’t a typical one in that my mum and dad came home at 5 and dinner was on the table at 6.”

In fact, father and son have worked together before. Daniel, from Stewart’s first marriage to Sheila Falconer, appeared alongside his dad in 1993 TV movie Death Train, and a 1992 Star Trek episode, also playing his son. Sharing a common career has allowed Daniel, who's based in London, and Patrick, in New York, to connect.

“I think it’s a great thing that we’re both in the same profession. It has so brought so much into both our lives that we can share and enjoy talking about. It’s terrific,” says Patrick.

Their Blunt Talk collaboration is more, ahem, cocky. In the series, created by Jonathan Ames (Bored to Death) and produced by Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy, Ted), Walter is a self-obsessed twit who has issues with public bathrooms. In this specific episode, he finds out that he’s not circumcised, after years of believing otherwise. His two sons, on the other hand, are — and family drama ensues. This story, as others, is rooted in reality, and is based tangentially on Stewart’s third marriage, to singer Sunny Ozell.

“My wife and I had been having a disagreement in which I’d mentioned being circumcised and she said I was not. I thought, ‘I’m seeing my doctor tomorrow and I will ask him and he will tell you.’ When my doctor was in that portion of that examination, I asked him to confirm for me that I was circumcised, he looked down and then looked up at me, and said, not. Something very similar gets into the series,” says Stewart.

But that’s not the funny part. “The comedy isn’t so much that he never knew, which is hilarious, but the fact that it leads to more family disputes because of course he had his sons circumcised to look like him. It’s another example of him getting everything wrong as a parent,” says Daniel.

Even when presented with absurdist plots, Patrick Stewart follows one basic rule. "I just believe in saying the lines with conviction," he says.

How very Blunt of him.