She was scared of him but soon loosened the Shakespearean up – then watched him give Star Trek depth, even insisting scenes be rewritten for her. Captain Picard’s right-hand woman salutes her fabulous friendI’d been warned about Patrick by friends who’d worked with him at the Royal Shakespeare Company. They said: “Marina, you can’t be you around Patrick Stewart. He’s all about the work. He takes it very seriously and he won’t abide you mucking about and trying to make people corpse.”We had been cast together on Star Trek: The Next Generation and, because of what I’d heard, I was a bit scared, a bit intimidated. And let’s be honest – Patrick was very serious about the work. But there was a concerted effort by the rest of us to beat it out of him. We were from a younger generation and we wanted to shake up this Englishman who was so typical of his generation – stiff upper lip and a Yorkshireman to boot. You know, the kind of person who was not exactly renowned for showing their emotions. Early on Patrick told us all that we weren’t there to have fun, and you should have seen the looks he got. I’m a cockney: I’ve got a Spurs tattoo and we all looked at him in the same way I look at an Arsenal fan. But we did loosen him up. And – he’s said this himself – I think we actually freed him. We gave him a freedom that he said he’d never really felt before. Continue reading...