'Time' Talks Trek With Shatner

William Shatner discussed ABC's cancellation of Show Me the Money, the difficulties of handing off the role of Captain Kirk to another actor and his recognition of his limited singing abilities in a new interview.

Time Magazine sat down for "10 Questions For William Shatner", which included a query about how he feels about the evolution of his Boston Legal character, Denny crane. "I like the character...but the writing this year does not enhance him as much as it might," the actor admitted. "We always want more to do, to go deeper and funnier. I'm sure that at some point they'll come around to it."

Shatner said that he hoped audiences had not tuned off Show Me the Money because of his hosting but because the format of the game wasn't exciting, since contestants weren't allowed to quit while they were ahead. "The fun of the game is the shock and awe of seeing somebody get so greedy they'll stay far beyond what you would think is a safe gamble. Ours wasn't a gamble," he explained.

Reiterating the fact that he really has no interest in going into space himself - ""Throwing up is a lonely sickness and not something I'd like to pay for" - Shatner suggested that J.J. Abrams is probably savvy enough to include him in Star Trek XI in some way, because "if you want to guarantee the audience will come in droves, one of the things you might do is include some members of the old cast...will the audience pick up their love affair? We don't know."

Shatner said that his therapeutic horseback riding program in Israel had been slowed by the conflict with Lebanon, but that he planned to offer financing to Israeli programs open to Jordanian and Palestinian children, "to take a small step toward peace." He also said that his recent album with Ben Folds was "perhaps more positively reviewed than anything else I've ever done", though he acknowledged that he can't sing.

The full interview is here.

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