An overwhelming majority of you believe that Bill Shatner will not go on the record about his toupee use. Truth is, Bill Shatner, being the sensitive soul that he is, would likely feel that he was being ambushed, if, for example a television interviewer touched upon this subject. However, Shats has himself opened the door to a legitimate line of questioning related to the toup. A few years ago, such questions would seem entirely out of context, but now a question such as "Bill, you ended your book Up Till Now with the question 'Do I wear a toupee?'. Why did you decide that this was the best way to end your book? And would you perhaps like to answer that question for us here tonight?'" would not be at all inappropriate. Yet interviewers remain reluctant, perhaps even afraid.
But to get a real discussion going, the setting would certainly have to be calm and intimate - something akin to Bill Shatner's own Shatner's Raw Nerve. Here's an interview that Shats did for the BBC's Heaven & Earth Show in 2004:
The setting is very intimate and comfortable. The interview is certainly helped by the fact that the interviewer is an attractive young lady with whom Bill Shatner feels at ease. The actor discusses some very personal feelings related to the tragic death of his third wife Nerine in August 1999. If such emotions can be discussed in public, then surely the toupee can be discussed too? And one should add that there is a certain, shall we say, "disconnect", between the very personal questions that Bill Shatner asks guests on his Raw Nerve show (for example asking the lovely Fran Drescher about the details of her rape), and an insistence that the toupee issue is simply far too personal. Here's Bill Shatner with Fran discussing the interview:
Thus, compared to some of the subjects discussed in Raw Nerve, the toupee is comparatively trivial. Yet, toupees have been such a huge part of Bill Shatner's life, that without a discussion of them a crucial gap remains in the official record. So Bill, it's time to talk!
On a separate note, this (see below) was Bill Shatner yesterday at Madame Tussauds in Los Angeles. The "TJ curly" toup is great (it looks very Wrath of Khan) , but what the hell did they do to his face? The wax figure looks nothing like him!
Did Bill Shatner feel separation grief when he was finally able to get rid of the toupee after the hair transplants that were done in 2000? Doubtful. Now that he has his own hair, he'd probably like to pretend he never had to wear a toup at all.
ReplyDeleteHe really won't even come clean on the corset issue, insisting that he just temporarily wore one after breaking a rib while horseback riding.
So no, I wouldn't expect him to mention the toup in an interview that's for public consumption.
One irony is that they have to do so much work in dyeing his hair and thickening it up with powders and sprays, that it still looks somewhat fake, leading some people to believe that he still wears a toup.
It's interesting, even in that picture one can see that Shatner at one point did wear a toupee/hairpiece/weave/wig/tribble.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty impossible to deny. The hairlines between Shatner and the Shatner wax figure are different.