‘We freed Patrick Stewart!’ Star Trek’s Marina Sirtis on breaking in her beloved but very serious co-star

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 friend

I’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.

Of course it went both ways. We learned so much from him, how could you not? We learned from his professionalism and his absolutely insane talent. He brought gravitas to the role. Star Trek was a bit of a punchline before Patrick came along – it’s not any more. Patrick gave it depth – here was this consummate Shakespearean actor playing the captain of a starship. It just shifted everything.

He had reservations about taking the role, and his friends – who loved him and were looking out for him – told him not to do it. They thought it would be the end of his career, whereas it was probably the best decision in showbusiness at that time. He handled fame with grace. He didn’t flaunt it. Never got too big for his boots. Early on, a review in a paper described him as an “unknown Shakespearean actor” and we blew it up and stuck it on his trailer door. Someone less self-deprecating might not have liked that but he left it up there for years. He knew it was all good fun.

Before meeting Patrick I was just a jobbing actor who did a bit of telly. I’d grown up dirt poor and had a difficult childhood, so we came from very similar backgrounds. I kept my cockney accent because I wanted people to know where I came from. Patrick was the same – not through his voice, but through his demeanour and actions. He was down to earth, a regular bloke. The fact that he supported Huddersfield Town shows you who he is – he didn’t go for Leeds or one of the glamour clubs.

We’d both experienced childhood trauma and came out with our stories after we had finished working together. We never sat down and went into it all. But when people have gone through something like that, there’s something in their demeanour, something that you can see in them, that you feel in them.

A month before Covid hit, my husband died. I was on my own in my house in Los Angeles for a year with just my dogs for company. Patrick was one of the very few people who invited me over for lunch, socially distanced in his garden. It had occurred to him that I was grieving and on my own – and he did something about that. It’s a mark of who he is.

He was always on my side. In one of the Star Trek movies we did there was a scene written for Picard and Data, where Picard tells the story of how his family were burned in a fire. Patrick went to the writers and producers and asked if they could rewrite the scene to have me be in it instead of Brent Spiner. He said that Brent’s character Data was an android, and that he really needed to look into my eyes in order to reach the emotions he needed. So our relationship on screen was a two-way street, which sounds ridiculous saying that out loud! I don’t know how I’ve got the cheek to say that when I’m talking about Patrick Stewart! But we did help each other.

It’s also because of Patrick that I am now in the annals of my football team. When Tottenham played Huddersfield in 2018, we both did interviews about the game and it was officially named in the match day programme as the Star Trek derby. That’s now a part of Tottenham history and, as anyone who knows me will tell you, that means more to me than winning an acting award!

It was the absolute privilege of my life and my career to work with him. We were very, very close and stayed in touch right to the end, even though it became difficult to speak to him on the phone because of his health. He went quickly in the end and it makes me very sad that I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. To say: “Thank you Patrick. Thanks for everything, mate.”