There’s no pinning George Takei’s life down. As a child, George Takei was imprisoned in World War II internment camps for Japanese Americans. As Sulu, he helped transform the portrayal of Asians in American television. And in later life, he’s become an equal marriage crusader, voiceover star, friend to Howard Stern and nemesis to William Shatner, and septuagenarian sex symbol.

Now, “Being Takei,” a new documentary playing next week at Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival, ties these threads of his life together, drawing them back to his life with his endearingly fretful husband (and partner of 25 years) Brad Takei.

I watched the documentary last night, then watched an “Adventure Time” cartoon to relax. Ten minutes in, there was your voice again. You’re everywhere these days.

I’m really not as ubiquitous as I used to be. I need my afternoon naps now. As a matter a fact, in four more days, I’ll be celebrating my 77th birthday.

Why did you make the documentary?

I have been a social justice advocate, whether it’s the civil rights movement, or the peace movement during the Vietnam war, or the campaign to get redress and an apology from the US government for our unconstitutional incarceration. Now I’m active in the equality movement for the LGBT movement.

When [director] Jennifer Kroot approached us with the idea for this documentary, Brad and I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to do away with the perceptions that people have about same-sex marriages. We’ve been together for more than a quarter-century. We have a genuine partnership. This is an opportunity to show the normality of our loving marriage.

It was a very difficult decision for Brad. Brad is profoundly camera-shy. And in some scenes he might look like that proverbial deer caught in the headlights. But bless his heart, he agreed to do it, even though it was an excruciatingly uncomfortable proposition.

I was reading an article in which Kroot described your marriage as a “functional-dysfunctional love story.”

[laughs] Yes, we are opposites. Brad is almost infuriatingly organized and a neat freak. We met in a gay running club. He’d run a few marathons and he was the best runner in the club, and stunningly good looking. I thought, I’ll get him to train me for my first marathon. He was very successful. I finished my first marathon, and he became more than my trainer.

I hope you won’t take it the wrong way if I suggest he’s the star of the film.

He steals the movie, I think.

When did you go from being famous for being Hikaru Sulu to being famous for being George Takei?

I think that was when I was persuaded to be the official announcer for the Howard Stern show. Via my periodic appearances on the Howard Stern show, people started to recognize me for me, and not a character on Star Trek. And certainly, that’s accorded me that much more megaphone volume in doing my advocacy work.

You seem to have a rapport with Howard Stern.

He can’t tolerate dishonesty. He’s got a keen antenna for that. He was particularly interested in our sex lives, and I must say I am often stupidly honest, and I pay the price for that when I get home.

Was gay rights even on the public radar when you were first doing Star Trek, in 1969?

No, it was not even talked about. Everything was very secretive. The gay bars of that time were usually down very seedy-looking alleyways. Even in gay bars, people had to have their guards up, because periodically, police would raid gay bars, and they would march the clients out, load them onto paddywagons, take them to the police station, photograph them, and fingerprint them and put their names on a list. They had leverage over you then. If they let that list out, your career was in jeopardy, and maybe even your membership in your family. For me to be pursuing a career as an actor was the most dangerous, foolhardy, risky thing to be doing.

Were you scared?

I was passionate about acting, and I took that chance. And people in the business are sensitive people. Certainly most of my work colleagues from Star Trek guessed that I was gay. They knew that they could destroy my career if they made the announcement that George Takei is gay. So they were all very cool about it. Only one person had no idea of my sexuality. It went right over his head.

Are we going to name names?

Oh, he’s one of yours. He’s a Canadian.

Who appears in the documentary, no less.

I had to bargain with him to get him to do the interview.

So much gets made out of this running animosity with William Shatner.

Isn’t that silly?

Does it really exist, or is there an element of performance here?

There is an element of that now, but Bill was not the easiest person to work with. If you know who he is, he’s supremely self-obsessed. There’s a thing called actor’s etiquette. That did not apply to him.

I didn’t realize that you had been so politically active. You worked on governor’s races and presidential campaigns, starting with Adlai Stevenson.

All my campaigns failed, except when I got behind Tom Bradley for mayor of LA, and when he won, he appointed me to the Southern California Rapid Transit District board. I had been an architecture and city planning student at Berkeley. The mandate from mayor Bradley was to get started on building a subway system.

In Canada, when I fly over Toronto, I can always peg where your subway stations are, because that’s where you have your high-rise areas. You organize your city in a way that’s much more efficient and salubrious.

Salubrious!

Well, that means healthy.

You were on that board for over a decade.

Eleven years. The reason I stepped off was, an actor doesn’t need to be wildly popular, but he cannot afford to be hated. And when you start putting up detour signs and residential neighborhoods get flooded with traffic, I didn’t want people demonstrating in front of my home.

What’s it like being Internet-famous?

It’s useful. It began that when we developed “Allegiance,” a musical based on the internment of Japanese Americans. It’s a subject that very few people know about.

We needed to prepare an audience, and I thought social media would be the best way to reach a lot of people. I had no idea it would grow that fast. My base was primarily made up of sci-fi geeks and nerds. I started with trial and error, and I found that humour was what got the most likes and shares. Then, as the audience grew, I thought, why not try a social justice issue: equality for the LGBT community. I did that, and it exploded.

Do you see yourself as a culture warrior?

No, I just see myself as an advocate of justice and equality for all people.

 

This piece was originally published in The Globe and Mail