How Star Trek became breeding ground for coolest old hipsters
From Patrick Stewart kissing Ian McKellen on the lips to George Takei, one of the first Hollywood stars to come out as gay and a vocal proponent of LGBT rights, the stars of Star Trek are as cool as they ever were
Patrick Stewart seems to be having a lot of fun lately. One day he’s recording silly videos on his New York rooftop with songstress wife Sunny Ozell and the next he’s tooling around town with bestie Ian McKellen wearing matching bowler hats. He gives ridiculous interviews, admitting that he only recently realised he was uncircumcised. You might catch a glimpse of him doing a song-and-dance number on US television network Starz, where he’s headlining his own comedy series, Blunt Talk.
Is Stewart the coolest senior citizen in the universe? Hard to say – he has a lot of competition in that area these days, and it’s all from fellow Star Trek veterans. The stars of the nerdiest franchise in showbiz history have boldly gone where few old actors have gone before, conquering the world of pop culture with the media savvy of kids one-third their age. Let the old Trekkers teach you a master class in how to extend your celebrity brand to the next generation.
They use social media as well as a millennial
Sure, Stewart uses Twitter to publicise his upcoming projects. He’s been talking up Blunt Talk, and he’ll alert his nearly two million followers about his next televised interview. But he also gives his fans an impeccably curated glimpse of his enviable personal life. When he announced his marriage to Ozell on Twitter, he did it with a sure-to-be viral photo.
But Stewart is no match for Star Trek’s social-media giant, George Takei. The former Mr Sulu is a prolific Facebook poster and tweeter who routinely garners tens of thousands of likes for each of his posts, many of which involve the internet’s favourite hobby – cats – and terrible puns.
They’re progressive
Many people get more conservative as they get older, to the mortification of younger generations. But Stewart isn’t that kind of grandfather. In a recent viral photo, Stewart was snapped at a movie premiere kissing McKellen on the mouth. Shortly after, Conan O’Brien asked Stewart about the liplock on a guest appearance, and he basically told Conan to lighten up. “That is how we greet one another or say goodbye,” he explained. “But Ian isn’t the only one. I don’t want you to think I’m a one-man guy.”
