Teamed up for a conference call to support the short but entertaining season one which wraps up on September 13, 2016 at 10pm ET/PT, Shatner and Bradshaw sounded like old friends who could even finish each other’s sentences. However, the Better Late Than Never stars actually weren’t friends before filming the series. During the conference call, Bradshaw and Shatner touched on what it was like to play tourist in Tokyo, Kyoto, Seoul, Hong Kong, Phuket and Chiang Mai with their new celebrity friends and how they quickly bonded while on the road together.
William Shatner and Terry Bradshaw Interview:
Reflecting back when you were a young Captain Kirk, what did you think the odds were that that show would still be famous now? What did you think the odds were that 50 years later you’d be doing a TV show where you climb 800 steps?
William Shatner: “Well, I think the same odds that Terry and I will be icons 50 years from now based on Better Late Than Never. After four shows you know it’s a phenomena and it’s going to last another 50 years. Those would be the odds. We were doing a middling successful TV show for three years, it was canceled and everybody thought that’s it and on to the next thing and then slowly it snowballed. And even while it was rolling down the hill gathering speed and momentum, nobody fully realized it and every one of the movies that I made, six or seven movies, they would burn the sets to have room for some other show because they figured that was the last movie.”
Did you really walk up the 800 steps?
William Shatner: “Terry carried me over the 799th. He staggered up there and said, ‘I’ll help you, buddy’ and I just depended on him.”
Did you know you had something special with this show going into it?
Terry Bradshaw: “I had no idea that this show would be successful. I mean, there’s so many – I’ve been a part of, I don’t know, four, five, pilots that never made it and yet we got a chance to actually shoot this show. I think while we were doing it I was so hot and miserable and hurting I never gave any thought that this thing would just be more than what it was, four shows, six shows and then you sit around and you go, ‘Well, will it be picked up?’ Who knows that and you just move on. So I know it was fun and I wanted to continue because it was so much fun, but I’m not privy and savvy enough to know what America is going to want to watch. That’s kind of what’s kind of cool about this show.”
William Shatner: “And I agree with that. You just don’t know what America is going to watch. It’s a great phrase. We were staggering around in the monsoon season in East Asia and tripping over each other’s feet and eating each other’s worms and octopus and unshaven and unkempt and miserable at times and joyous at others. We were just fending for ourselves and trying to help each other with no thought of how this is going to sell. And the fact that it is as successful as it is comes as a surprise, certainly to me.”
If there’s a season two, how different do you think it will be knowing what you’re dealing with now versus going into sort of unknown territory the first time?
Terry Bradshaw: “I think it will. As a matter of fact, Bill, I talked to Jeff Dye this morning before I left Dallas and I said if in fact – and I don’t know that we have the second season – but if we do, now that I know Bill and George and Henry and Jeff and the producer and the folks at NBC and I understand, I see now what they’re cutting this thing up to be, the second season will be more exciting for me because I walked into the unknown and I’ve got to tell you, it was so humid and so miserable. All I would want to know is I want to make sure we don’t go south again or go to Asia.”
William Shatner: “Into the snow. We’ve got to go into the snow.”
Terry Bradshaw: “My God! Yes, I was miserable, just miserable.”
William Shatner: “It was miserable. But the danger is now…and I haven’t watched any of the shows so I really don’t know what they’re doing. People have commented and I’ve listened to their comments, but the danger is now that we know what works and what doesn’t work, we’re liable to go and do what we think is working and without the knowledge that the reason the stuff works is because we didn’t know whether it would work or not. Is that obtuse reasoning?”
Terry Bradshaw: “Yes, I mean, they could have said, ‘Look, here’s what we want,’ and our stumbling, bumbling personalities all came together as we tried to figure out what they want, and that will be the same thing here. You can’t contrive this stuff; you can’t make up the dialogue. You just do it and so therefore I think it will be funny. If you haven’t watched any of it, I mean, it’s funny. Seriously funny, it is funny. It reaches my people and my people, as you well know, talk like I do. It reaches them, they love it.”
William Shatner: “Well, hell, I talk like you do and I’m from Montreal. It sounds wonderful and keeping that sort of spontaneous approach is critical and that’s what we would aim for. Yes, exactly.”
You guys really obviously didn’t go to the DMZ but did you really believe that you did? When you found out, how did you react?
Terry Bradshaw: “Nobody told me it was fake.”
William Shatner: “Nobody told me it was fake.”
Terry Bradshaw: “I’m telling you, I was not comfortable in a lot of things we did but that DMZ deal, yes, I mean, you see it and I’m tall, I’m staring this thing down and I’m going, ‘Really?’ I mean, ‘Really?’ I mean, I was a little bit nervous about it and then you know obviously Jeff sticks that (phone over the line). It’s funny. It’s stupid funny.”
William Shatner: “When we got there I thought that was the place. It looks very much like it and when this North Korean officer was talking to us I was looking at his uniform and it was quite worn. It was like the braid was unbraiding, you know, and the elbows. I thought, ‘Wow, it is really a poverty stricken nation.’ And then when it was revealed as a joke, I was put out. I sat down. I thought, ‘I don’t want to be part of this.'”
Terry Bradshaw: “Well, you know, I was mad because I really wanted that story to be real.”
William Shatner: “Yes, we were both upset. We were both upset that it wasn’t real.”
Terry Bradshaw: “Exactly. And when the guy on the other side, the North Vietnamese guy says, what? ‘Go Pittsburgh…'”
William Shatner: “And the fact that some people knew it was real and some of us didn’t, that stuck at me too. I mean, what is the policy? Is the policy to look like an idiot in front of everybody else or to be in on the know? Those are editorial decisions that had to be made, like working it out. Did Shatner and Bradshaw not know and we tell everybody else?”
Was there anything in particular that like you would have liked to have seen left in the show that they had to take out?
Terry Bradshaw: “I thought that the editing was phenomenal and I have not given any thought to, ‘Well where is this scene or that scene?’ […]There’s nothing Bill that you would say, ‘Well, I wish they would have added this or added that.’ I haven’t seen that yet. I’ll have a better understanding or a better answer for you after seeing the next one. Why don’t you watch it? You didn’t watch it, Bill?”
William Shatner: “Well, I don’t watch it Terry because I don’t like the way I look. I don’t like the way…the edit is always somewhat of a disappointment and so I find it better not to look at what I’m doing.”
Terry Bradshaw: “Really? I’m like that about a lot of things but I actually wanted to see how they cut this thing up. God, you’d laugh your butt off it is seriously funny.”
Is there one particular moment from the trip that you both will cherish? Something that you went through that maybe you didn’t expect?
William Shatner: “Well, it was filled with unexpected things; both known and unknown. Probably the best of the moments was between human beings that five people who had no knowledge of each other, maybe some cursory knowledge which may have been curse words, but some little tiny bits and pieces here and there but no depth and then we spend a month in each other’s company and had some really meaningful talks. It was very interesting from that point of view. Getting to know these marvelous people at the top of their business.”
Terry Bradshaw: “There’s two things that I really enjoyed. I enjoyed getting dressed and doing makeup with everybody in the morning because there was more jokery going around, more slapstick comedy. I mean, it was really seriously funny and I enjoyed that part a lot because it’s like we’re all getting dressed together to go to work. I enjoyed that everybody’s loose and cracking jokes. And then Bill touched on the talking part. Bill, do you recall, we had several talks?”
William Shatner: “You and I? Absolutely.”
Terry Bradshaw: “Yes, and the one at the cave.”
William Shatner: “The monks.”
Terry Bradshaw: “The purple cave with the monks and everything. I enjoyed that because one thing about Bill, and I accused him of studying the night before so he knew everything that was going on the next day. I said, ‘How can anybody know this much about monks or Thailand?’ I mean, that man is seriously educated and I tried to pigeonhole him, I tried to catch him, but he always had an answer and me being uneducated about this stuff it sounded good to me, you know? But Bill and I had some really, really good talks and he made a lot of sense about where we were and how this all got started. So I enjoyed that. I especially enjoyed getting dressed, doing the makeup and having fun with everybody. That to me was a blast.”
William Shatner: “And you look good in lipstick.”
Terry Bradshaw: “I do. You know what? I do. Now, you didn’t watch this thing but I actually turned to my wife and I said, ‘I look like I’m retaining a little fluid.'”
William Shatner: “You had to specify what fluid.”
Terry Bradshaw: “Oh my God, man, I looked like a big old blimp in this thing.”
William Shatner: “And that’s one of the reasons I’m not watching it because we had all of that salty food. There was a lot of water… I’d like to think of it as water retention.”
Terry Bradshaw: “Yes, that’s what I’m going with. As a matter of fact, I still have it.”
William Shatner: “Oh man. It’s awful.”
What’s left to check off from your bucket list?
William Shatner: “Well, my bucket list was to catch a pass from Terry.”
Terry Bradshaw: “Did that.”
William Shatner: “And get in the ring with George Foreman.”
Terry Bradshaw: “And you did that.”
William Shatner: “And to have Henry make me laugh and he told me a great joke so I laughed hard. So the next bucket list is, well, I wrote Terry saying, ‘Imagine us, you and I, Terry with a cigar in one hand and a Cuba Libre in the other,’ and that’s going to be part of my bucket list.”
Terry Bradshaw: “I had never thought about a bucket list. This wasn’t on my bucket list but now I guess I could say that I’ve done a movie, I’ve done a TV show, I’ve done a pregame football show, I played football, I’ve sung, I’ve danced, I’ve done Vegas. What’s next? I haven’t skydived and I’m not going to. Bucket list? Bill and I both are horse competitors. Oh Bill you’ll love this, Tammy won the world in the aged mare at the Palomino World Show this year. How about that?”
William Shatner: “Oh, that’s fantastic!”
Terry Bradshaw: “That’s her first world title.”
William Shatner: “That’s wonderful, Terry.”
Terry Bradshaw: “Yes. My bucket list is way over full. My wife goes, ‘Swim with the sharks!’ She knows I’m petrified of the ocean. I’m not swimming with sharks. No way is that going to happen. I just think I would just like to keep raising really good horses and have world champions that I’ve raised. At this stage of my life that’s it.”
William Shatner: “And avoid kicking the bucket.”
Terry Bradshaw: “Well, you know that was part of our bet on this show was which country will Bill pass away in? And I said Thailand.”
William Shatner: “Making bets as to where I would die…”
Terry Bradshaw: “I thought that would be a ratings grabber right there.”
William Shatner: “I fooled them all. I’m waiting for a pickup. I’m waiting for the second season and we’ll call it, ‘Where Am I Going to Die?'”
Terry Bradshaw: “I mean, seriously if you think about it, if this thing does a second season and Bill is 85 now, if they don’t put us back in the heat in the tropics I think he’s going to be all right. We’ve got to go cold because old people like cold weather, I think. I mean eventually it’s going to happen, right? It’s going to happen.”
William Shatner: “Well, it’s got to put the blood closer to the heart where it belongs.”
Terry Bradshaw: “See there? There he goes being all smart. He said it puts the blood closer to the heart. And my wife just said it freezes up your joints. I know at our age I know there’s a joint that’s frozen pretty good.”
Henry Winkler said you learn a lot about yourself when you travel and you step outside of your comfort zone. What did you both learn from the trip?
William Shatner: “Well, I’m pretty much a loner, very few people get into my life and these guys and the people traveling, and the person traveling with them, these guys got into my life. It got personal and loving and genuine and warm. I admired the experience of the togetherness. I’m sitting at a desk and in front of me is a piece of paper and I’ve been trying to write a song about space and entanglement, and entanglement is a word that’s being used now as the building blocks of nature but entanglement also refers to how we’re all connected. And the five of us got connected on this trip to one degree or another and it was quite an experience.”
Terry Bradshaw: “You can’t spend 34 days together and not work through…if there are issues you work through them because it’s important that you get along. So that experience, that anticipation, that anxiety attack that I had prior to leaving Los Angeles together I’ve got to tell you, was immediately taken away. So I found out that superstars Winkler and William Shatner are real people and I was so thankful for that. And then I knew that this was going to be good. This was going to be good, it was going to be comfortable.
But what I also found out, and I’m really proud of, is that as hot as it was and as humid as it was is that I could literally live the life like an actor putting in such extremely long hours going and showering and going to bed without eating and getting up and starting over. I found out that I have patience and I have a durability about me at the age of 67 when we shot this that I was kind of impressed with myself.”
William Shatner: “Well, that’s great but you know it’s staggering to hear you say that because the rest of us looking at you, this phenomenal athlete who was at the top of his game during those years, better than anyone, maybe the greatest that ever lived is the epitome of endurance and strength and courage and durability. That’s amazing.”
How surprised were you by how quickly you clicked? Have you stayed in touch since the season wrapped up?
William Shatner: “Well, you know, we haven’t. Everybody’s busy and goes on so Terry and I, for example, have a few times communicated by email to say, ‘How are you? What are you doing?’ And Terry comes to Los Angeles and he’ll be doing so more often now that he’s going to be color (commentator) and the Rams have come to Los Angeles. Terry is going to celebrate that with me before it’s too late.
And so, no, we have communicated very little but on my part with the anticipation that now that we know this is working, the show is working, that we will spend more time together. And as a result I will appreciate more emphatically the time I will get to spend with Terry and the others. But I’m looking forward to spending the time. We ate meals together, we’d meet in the morning, walks and the activities that we had to do.”
Terry Bradshaw: “You and I worked out just about every day in the gym. Bill’s got a workout habit. I mean, you’ve got to see this guy. It’s pretty impressive. I never saw Henry in there, but he and I were in there. And Jeff Dye never worked out.”
William Shatner: “No, he’s too thin.”
Terry Bradshaw: “George did. Yes, yes, exactly either that or he was hung over drinking all of that beer. Bill’s right, when we finished… Well, first of all, you heard me say that I wasn’t (real sure) meeting these guys and I was scared perhaps Bill (would) ask me Star Trek questions to see if I was a fan. So my wife actually Googled all of the information and gave me everything I needed to know.”
William Shatner: “That’s hysterical. I didn’t know that.”
Terry Bradshaw: “That’s why I came up with, ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’ I didn’t know that because I didn’t watch the show.”
William Shatner: “And I had to ask people, ‘Was it three or five rings?'”
Terry Bradshaw: “Yes, right. I reminded you of what that was. No, it was we built the relationship and you just don’t know when you put five people together, five total strangers, how is it going to be received. ‘What’s the perception through a television?’ and that is exactly what it was. It was chemistry; it worked. It’s like the pregame show at Fox. You don’t know, but it works. Our friendship grew and grew and grew to the point where we could insult one another, we could make fun of one another, and we could embrace and hug one another.
When Bill did the funny thing about George Foreman on the boat, nobody laughed and he got his feelings hurt and we just told him, ‘Oh god, that’s terrible.’ I mean, he was so serious and so were we, ‘That’s terrible. Sit down, that’s not funny.’ And so you learn these things about people. But chemistry, chemistry is just that – it’s chemistry. It either blends and comes together and everybody says, ‘Oh look, these guys like one another.’ And genuinely if you don’t like one another, it will show. That was not the case. We had a blast, absolute blast, and I’ve got all of these new friends. I’ve got all of these new friends.
It was totally a surprise. I remember I got a call one day from Jimmy Johnson. He said, ‘Boy, you and Shatner really have some funny lines.’ I said, ‘What do you mean by funny lines? Those aren’t lines. We don’t have lines!’ He said, ‘What do you mean? That’s not written?’ I said, ‘No, that’s not written. You can’t write this stuff.’ And that’s the beauty part about this is that there’s some funny people in this thing man, I mean god dang!
Bill, you didn’t know this I don’t think (but) I would come in in the morning and the first thing I would say to Henry Winkler, I’d go, ‘Whoa! Aaaaay!’ And the first day he stopped me and he said, ‘Let me just ask you something. Are you making fun of me or do you really like that?’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m wanting you to do it. I absolutely love it. No I’m not making fun of you.’ So then he would go, ‘Whoa!’ I only did two, ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ and Bill says, ‘Okay, enough of the beam me up.'”
William Shatner: “I’d rather go, ‘Whoa!’ I’ll do whoa.”
