I’ve never seen her in person, but her MLK story grew from something pretty basic to something more grand, apparently with each telling. Basically, she wanted to quit the show because her supporting role was repetitious, and King told her she had to stay because “they” (meaning whitey) couldn’t take down what she’d done. Later on in the “Plato’s Stepchildren” episode, Kirk and Uhura kissed — the first interracial kiss on US network TV.
After the series ended, Shatner couldn’t get any longer term work, and basically slept in the back of his van, living however he could, getting a day of work here and there, surviving but just barely. He’s been in thousands of roles, mostly small ones, but starred in four TV series that come to mind (the last one was cancelled during its first season, but he was already so old, it is a tribute to his reliability that he could get cast, and the production could get insured), and had one-off roles in many others.
Years went by, Star Wars came out, paving the way to reboot Star Trek as a movie (there had been a stillborn attempt to revive the TV series, scripts were written, the cast was mostly onboard, but the plug got pulled; this would have been after the animated series). The movie sucked, but made gobs of money, leading to, what? Nine sequels? Five sequels with the original cast, a sixth sequel with a few members of the original cast (and a lot of screen time for Shatner), more with TNG cast; four spinoff TV series.
And still Nichols told Shatner in interview that she hated him; Takei apparently concocts hateful lies that he tells on talk shows; meanwhile, when Nimoy had started down that terrible road of geriatric forgetfulness and into dementia, he wouldn’t appear at a convention unless Shatner was there beside him, to improv lines that were funny but slightly absurd and nonsequitur, in order to help his friend.
I hadn’t heard that about her supposedly hating Shatner. I saw William Shatner in a one-man show at Grady Gammage auditorium (big place) circa 1969. He recited Galileo, “the Man in the Glass Box,” and other plays and poetry, told stories. It was a great night, and I came away thinking he was a darn good actor.
I am not 100% sure of your narrative.
T.J. Hooker was on for 4 years and did OK.
As for the lies, all the “Non-4” (Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty) were the subject of long-held resentments — especially from the extended “no-kill” cast (Uhuru, Chapel, Sulu, Chekov, Rand).
But I had not heard of actual hate. Nichols’ comments were at a roast, but are considered to be only half jest.
There are so many versions of these stories, who can tell what is accurate?
My older brother recently started posting his memories of each of my family members, including me, on FB (first name only — you will never find it).
He gets the narrative correctly but most of the details are wrong, in some instances badly so.
We age, we forget, we forgive, we color, we cast.
In this case, Nichols was and is a trooper. She did extend her 4 year career as Uhuru for 5 decades, but she had/has the talent and beauty to carry it off. Good for her!
I do pray she recovers from this. We are losing so many childhood heroes. Our parents and older boomers lost many to smoking. Now, we consider 80 to be too damn young. And it is.
That doesn’t make too much sense about Shatner. After “Trek” he was actually very busy doing guest-spots in lots and lots of other series... Mannix, Ironside, Marcus Welby, Hawaii Five-O, Barnaby Jones, etc., and starred in at least a dozen tv-movies. He was about as prolific as any actor of that status was, for the decade that followed “Trek True, his next attempt at a series, “The Barbary Coast,” with Doug McClure flopped. But Shatner was definately getting steady paychecks. Unless he had somehow gotten into bad debt, or owed some massive alimony, he should have been quite comfortable during the decade between the “Trek” series and the first “Trek” movie.