William Shatner has opened up about his former friendship and falling out with Leonard Nimoy, his long-time friend and co-star on Star Trek.
Shatner, who is speaking out three years after his friend’s death, revealed he and Nimoy weren’t speaking at the time of his death.
He also admitted that he doesn’t understand why Leonard felt the way he did, and why he couldn’t come forward to address his issues with him prior to his death.
On February 25, 2015, Leonard Nimoy fell into a coma and died of complications from COPD two days later. He was 83 years old at the time, with fans best remembering him from his role as Spock on Star Trek.
However, he and Shatner were no longer speaking, despite having worked together on-off since 1964.
Shatner says that had previously been great friends, and grew closer as they traveled around the world together attending fan conventions for Star Trek.
But in a piece for the New York Daily News, Shatner says he thinks his former co-star got upset with him because he was doing a documentary about Star Trek and he had supposedly filmed Nimoy without his permission.
However, he said he was confused about why his former friend couldn’t reach out to address his concerns with him — and what the underlying issues were that caused the rift to be more than superficial.
Apparently, Shatner thought his friend was joking when he said he didn’t want to be in his documentary, but the negative feeling seems to have run deep for Leonard.
Shatner said that he still struggles with the loss of their friendship and he will never know exactly why their friendship didn’t survive.
He said: “Until the day I die, I will still wonder what caused that rift. After all the years we had spent together, after the bond we had forged, what could I have done that was so irreparable that he couldn’t even talk to me about it?”