Inside William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy’s feuds from final rift that ended Star Trek stars’ friendship to funeral snub

WILLIAM Shatner once called his Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy the “only friend” he ever had, however, the two shared a tumultuous relationship throughout their careers until Nimoy’s death in 2015.

The two were best known for their roles in the Star Trek franchise with Shatner portraying Captain James Tiberius Kirk and Nimoy playing Kirk’s second-in-command, Spock.

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However, that wasn’t the first time Nimoy and Shatner shared a screen – just a few years earlier in 1964, Shatner appeared in an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that also featured Nimoy.

Star Trek: The Original Series lasted only three seasons between 1966 to 1969 but helped spark a franchise that continues to this day.

Nimoy described the characters’ relationship as a “great sense of brotherhood. Spock was tremendously loyal and had a great appreciation for the talent and the leadership abilities of Kirk.

“He was totally devoted to seeing to it that whatever Kirk needed to be done got done.”

Throughout their adventures, Kirk often relied on Spock’s advice to get through difficult situations and also leaned on him to share the burden of commanding the USS Enterprise.

However, the two characters had a friendly rivalry with one another, which bled into real life.

Nimoy said the rivalry helped their performances on the show as it allowed them to be competitive with one another.

Their time on the set wasn’t always a positive one, however, as Nimoy became an alcoholic while working on Star Trek and ended up in a drug rehabilitation program.

Shatner also struggled with alcoholism and the two helped each other with their personal struggles.

“Leonard Nimoy’s personal experience of alcoholism now came to play a central role in my life and it helped us bond together in a way I never could have imagined in the early days of Star Trek,” Shatner wrote in his 2008 book, Up Till Now: The Autobiography.

Despite the intense love and respect the two had for one another, the two actors had issues expressing their frustrations with each other.

Co-star George Takei, who portrayed Hikaru Sulu, often said that Shatner was difficult to work with, saying in a 2023 interview that the relationship between the two wasn’t as heartwarming as the actors portrayed.

“There is this fiction that Bill and Leonard [Nimoy] were good friends, but we know better—Leonard privately expressed his irritation with Bill,” Takei told The Times.

Shatner himself said that he and Nimoy had several falling outs throughout their relationship.

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“Leonard was a wonderful guy who struggled, the same way I did, with family and children and career and gradually made his way up, through talent and attendance,” he told ET Online.

“We were like brothers. I loved him as family.”

Nimoy revealed in 2014 that he had been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and had been in and out of treatment for the disease.

On February 19, 2015, he was taken to UCLA Medical Center for chest pains and fell into a coma days later on February 25, dying just two days later at his Bel Air home in Los Angeles, California at 83 years old.

In the last few years before his death, Nimoy and Shatner were not on speaking terms – something that Shatner holds a deep regret about.

“I don’t know what happened. He wouldn’t answer my calls, I wrote him a heartfelt letter saying how much I loved him and I wished him well, because he was dying,” he said.

“I wanted to see him, and I am hurt, and so, devastated.”

Shatner was unable to attend Nimoy’s funeral due to other commitments, however, his daughters went in his place.

“It was made clear to me that I was not welcome at his funeral. That was painful,” he wrote in his book, Live Long And…: What I Might Have Learned Along the Way.

“I had an easy excuse. My closest friend was Leonard Nimoy. We were born four days apart and raised in Orthodox Jewish homes. We shared so much throughout our careers. I loved Leonard, and he used to refer to me as his brother.

“Yet at the end of his life and for reasons I still don’t know, he was not my friend. I would call him and he wouldn’t answer the phone or return any messages. He died and I didn’t feel welcome at his funeral.”

Shatner immortalized his decades-long friendship with Nimoy in his book, Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man, described as a blunt and honest look into Nimoy’s life from one of the people who knew him best.

While he admits, he still hasn’t figured out what kept him and Nimoy apart at the end of his life, Shatner said he still considers him his dearest friend.

“We talked about all kinds of things in the darkness of the limousine, about divorce and children. But something happened, I don’t know what, it was so bizarre,” he told the Guardian.

“But his daughter told me not long ago: ‘He really loved you.’ And that moved me to tears.”

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