William Shatner gives SXSW's most hilarious keynote before breathtaking story of space trip

South by Southwest’s greatest one-man show, by far, was William Shatner’s Thursday keynote.

To clarify, it was an hourlong conversation with Alamo Drafthouse co-founder Tim League at Austin Convention Center. But TV’s Captain Kirk was the sun around which League and every other satellite in the SXSW galaxy orbited. So much so that the conference let the quick-witted Shatner, 91, go five minutes past time to conclude a gut-busting, tear-welling visit that saw him leave his seat often to perform monologues about a life defined by outer space — first on “Star Trek,” and then a voyage that made him the oldest person in history to reach the stars.

Throughout, Shatner enlisted League as his comedy foil, teasing him about the cinema operator’s powder blue suit more than once. At times, it felt like League was corralling tribbles, to the audience’s delight.

1-on-1 with Cheech Marin: Hey man, is Cheech & Chong back?

A documentary about the actor, “You Can Call Me Bill,” is set to premiere Thursday at the Paramount Theatre.

Here’s what we learned from Shatner’s SXSW keynote.

Before he was a Starfleet captain, William Shatner was a kid in Canada.

League kicked things off: “Why don’t we begin, but begin at the beginning?”

Shatner let out an infant’s cry.

“I emerged from the womb,” he said.

League fast-forwarded to Shatner’s beginnings in Montreal children’s theater — “Good lord man, you’ve been doing your homework,” Shatner said. He remembered going to summer camp on a country farm run by French Canadians, where the farmers would slaughter pigs and make blood pudding. It was in this setting that Shatner got his first taste of an actor’s rush.

“I made the audience cry because of some of the words they gave me to speak,” he recalled. His father picked him up and proudly exclaimed “My boy, Bill!”

More by Eric Webb:Julio Torres and Tilda Swinton create a comedy eclipse in 'Problemista' at SXSW

His father, Joseph, came to America from Europe when he was a boy, and he showed his love through hard work and not affection.

“My father’s given me love!” the young Shatner thought. “I like this. I think I’ll do it again.”

Later, League said, “You’re a distinctly Canadian human being.” Shatner explained that he tried hard to eliminate the “aboots” from his vocabulary. He has two sisters in Montreal, whom he visits.

“I still have my Canadian passport,” he said. When the customs agents process him through the border, Shatner said, they exclaim: “Oh my god, you’re still Canadian!”

A star was born, before his trek.

Shatner studied economics in college. Poorly.

“I never went to economics class. I was the worst student that ever went to McGill University,” he said. Instead, he pursued passions like musicals, radio and theater.

He cut some of his acting teeth in amateur plays and at a summer theater built in a caldera in Montreal. Then, he spent three years with Ottowa’s Canadian Repertory Theatre and with the Stratford Shakespeare Company. He was an understudy for Christopher Plummer in a production of “Henry V” in 1957.

At this point, Shatner left his chair and started vamping, leaving League to look over his shoulder at his conversation partner.

“The actor’s muse had been on my shoulder, and the actor’s muse said, ‘Learn the words,'” Shatner said of the moment he was called up to perform. He actually forgot a line during the show, he said in a winding anecdote, but the muse spoke to him just in time. He got great reviews.

League asked Shatner if he was still friends with Plummer.

“I am still friends with Chris. He’s dead,” he deadpanned, one of many times he ribbed League.

“I tried to correct it mid-stride,” League said, “Didn’t really work.”

League brought up one of his favorite Shatner movies, Roger Corman’s 1962 film “The Intruder,” which tackled race and integration issues. The actor remembered a hostile shoot in the South, where the cast and crew were harassed by gangs. Shatner recounted plotting an escape route through the window of his motel room, where he planned to lie down in the corn field if danger struck.

“It’s funny, but it was real,” he said, adding: “Our lives were threatened making that movie, no question.”

More:SXSW's 'John Wick 4' secret screening was spoiled, but Keanu Reeves in Austin? Whoa

Shatner on playing Kirk: 'I added a little lightness.'

League asked how Shatner got the gig on the original “Star Trek” TV series.

“Talent,” he replied to wild applause.

Shatner recalled going to see the original pilot for the show, wherein Jeffrey Hunter played the captain of the USS Enterprise. “That’s really good, why didn’t they buy it?” Shatner remembered thinking of the failed pilot.

He got his turn at the helm and tried to bring comfort and ease to the role of James T. Kirk. “I added a little lightness, I think, and then it sold, and that’s the answer,” he said.

League asked why “Star Trek,” which only ran three seasons from 1966 to 1969, failed. Shatner objected. “You know, it was not quite a failure. It was a ‘fai-,’” he joked by stopping mid-word.

Shatner praised the writers of the series and their approach to social issues of the time — “Star Trek” was a very progressive show. He cited the classic episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” as an example.

“The stupidity of racism is not said” in episodes like that, Shatner pointed out. “Look how stupid it is — it’s just there.”

Shatner ruefully told the story of once trying his hand at standup comedy in character as Captain Kirk in a live performance in Los Angeles: “Oh lordy lord!”

“It was probably the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he said.

Space pioneer William Shatner leaves SXSW with one big question.

Toward the end of the keynote, League turned the discussion toward Shatner’s longtime passion for science, and his history-making voyage to space in 2021.

“Something’s missing about the excitement of learning,” he told League of today's culture. He geeked out about the science of trees sending electrochemical signals to each other, and lamented about the lack of worldwide enthusiasm for solving the climate crisis.

“Go be a scientist! Save the world!” he said to theoretical children seeking a career path.

Exploration, of course, comes naturally to Shatner. He explained going to Seattle to meet with Blue Origin honcho Jeff Bezos and trying to get on a flight to space. He didn’t make the cut for the first flight, but they asked him about being on the second: “like being vice president when you want to be president,” Shatner joked.

He convinced himself to say yes when he thought of the title of his book, “Boldly Go,” about saying yes to new adventures.

He underwent the prep and made it to the spacecraft. Upon countdown, someone said that anyone who wanted to get off could do so. Shatner thought about it, but then: “I think, ‘I’m Captain Kirk, I can’t.’”

Shatner described the experience. He could see the blackness of space (“It was DEATH,” he said). But then he saw Earth. “The beige, the white, the blue, was life,” he said.

“And then I felt this sadness,” he said. The entire ballroom at SXSW was rapt and silent.

Shatner found himself crying upon landing. He realized he was feeling grief — for the planet, for global warming, for life that humanity doesn’t even know about yet having already gone extinct. He thought of cedar trees clinging to cliffs, and of slime snaking its way through rocks to find the sun.

“How sad is that, that this beautiful sacred thing called life has evolved and disappeared and we didn’t even know it was there?” he said.

He channeled those feeling into a song called “So Fragile, So Blue.” He calls it a rallying cry.

“What can we do? That’s the question I leave with you all,” he said, and left SXSW to rapturous applause.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: William Shatner talks Star Trek, Blue Origin space flight at SXSW