The Real-Life Couples of the ‘Star Trek’ Cast: Love Stories Beyond the Final Frontier
Discover the 'Star Trek' cast’s surprising relationships, from William Shatner to Leonard Nimoy
Anyone who’s seen the original Star Trek is well aware that Captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, has a reputation with the ladies that stretches from one end of the galaxy to the other, and that Mr. Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, has had a few romantic liaisons of his own, but what about the rest of the crew of the starship Enterprise? Well, despite the captain getting the lion’s share of the romance on camera, in real life the entire cast found love (in many instances multiple times).
One person not included in the gallery below is series creator Gene Roddenberry, whose private life — especially when you consider the time period of the early 1960s — was fairly controversial. In 1942 married Eileen-Anita Rexroat, and they had daughters Darleen Anita and Dawn Allison. Before starting work on Star Trek, Roddenberry began simultaneous affairs with two actresses: Nichelle Nichols, who guest-starred in his 1964 TV series The Lieutenant and later portrayed Lt. Uhura on Star Trek, and Majel Barrett, who played “Number One” in the original 1964 pilot The Cage and later recurred as Nurse Christine Chapel on the series.
Nichols soon refused to “be the other woman to the other woman” and broke things off, though the two maintained a working relationship and friendship. Roddenberry would undergo an acrimonious divorce from Rexroat in 1968 and married Barrett the following year. In the divorce, the court awarded Rexroat 50% of Roddenberry’s then-current and future revenue in Star Trek.
And then there was William Shatner, who had a major reputation for his flirtatious manner with guest stars, though no one lodged a complaint against him. That being said, the late Yvonne Craig, who portrayed the character of Batgirl on the 1960s Batman television show, and guest-starred as Marta, the green-skinned Orion slave girl, on Star Trek‘s third season episode “Whom Gods Destroy,” had some choice words to say about him.
“He was an a–through the whole thing, though he didn’t start that way,” Craig said. “He invited me to his dressing room to have lunch—I think on the first day—and I thought, ‘OK, he wants to go over lines, because he doesn’t really know me.’ But it was the strangest lunch I ever had. We didn’t talk. We actually ate lunch, though he did tell me he raised Doberman Pinchers and that he had a red one. Okaaaaaay. Then, when we got down to shooting, he would say, ‘Remember…’, and he’s giving me all this background about my character and telling me where he wants me to stand so that his best side is showing. I mean, it was just horrible and nobody liked him. He just had no social skills whatsoever, and so long as I was painted green, he was trying to grab me behind the sets.”
In the images that follow, you’ll travel through the years and meet the romantic partners of William Shatner (Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Spock), DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy), James Doohan (Montgomery “Scotty” Scott), George Takei (Hikaru Sulu), Nichelle Nichols (Nyota Uhura) and Walter Koenig (Pavel Chekov).
These actors worked together through the original Star Trek (1966 to 1969), the Saturday morning animated series (1973 to 1974) and the feature films Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), while Shatner Doohan and Koenig would appear in Star Trek: Generations (1994).
Some of them have left us, but their legacies — both in terms of Star Trek (which began nearly 60 years ago) and their personal lives — live on.
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