Making peace with Spock: Adam Nimoy on reconciling with his famous father
Even when the pointy ears came off, Leonard Nimoy had trouble expressing emotion. A highly repressed, high-functioning alcoholic, Nimoy connected with the character of Spock on “Star Trek” better than he could with his adoring young son, as Adam Nimoy writes in his new memoir, “The Most Human: Reconciling With My Father, Leonard Nimoy.”
It wasn’t until Leonard and later, Adam, who smoked pot daily for 30 years, both entered 12-step programs and got clean that they eventually found a tentative path back toward each other. But Adam Nimoy has never stopped celebrating his father and his work, including in his 2016 documentary “For the Love of Spock.”
On Saturday, Nimoy will be at the “Super 70mm Star Trek 60th Anniversary Series” at the Fine Arts Theatre Beverly Hills, where he will present his documentary and then discuss “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn” with its director, Nicholas Meyer. Then he returns to a tour of 20-plus cities to promote “The Most Human,” including many stops at Jewish community centers and temples “because there’s this whole Judaic element to Leonard Nimoy and our story,” Adam Nimoy said recently while speaking by video from his Los Angeles home about the book and his father.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Are you looking forward to presenting your documentary again for an audience of avid fans?
As I travel around promoting my book, I’m just amazed at how much love and devotion there still is for Leonard. There’s been so much produced on “Star Trek,” so my film is just a small chapter. I’m just honoring my dad and what he accomplished in life, coming as a poor kid from Boston to Hollywood and having a breakthrough that would have an impact on millions of people all over the world.
The book’s title focuses on your father, but the book is largely about your recovery, your relationship with your children and the love you found in your second marriage with Martha. How did it evolve?
My original plan was to write about recovery and my family because I had written about my dad and I talked about my relationship with him in the movie, and I thought that maybe it’s time to move away from that.
My kids are always saying, “You’re your own man. Enough with Leonard and ‘Star Trek.’” Yet, they always call me up celebrating him and his memory. My son was drumming in a nightclub and Jeff Goldblum came up to talk to him about his drumming and Jonah said to him, “You worked with my grandfather on ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ and they talked about him. And my daughter works at Paramount, where Leonard’s legacy is all over the place.
So I did resist a little but it was the elephant in the room. I was writing about my recovery and relating to my mother and my ex-wife and my kids, but the granddaddy of all my resentment and the biggest part of my recovery was, “How do I deal with my dad?”
I’m 20 years sober. I still share the story of my dad in 12-step meetings — anonymously, these people don’t know I’m Leonard Nimoy’s son — and it resonates with people having trouble with their own parents. They come up to me after to say they’re inspired to try to reconcile with somebody. So while I touched on these issues with my father in my first book and my documentary, I decided to do a much deeper dive into our relationship.
When Leonard Nimoy was approached about acting in a new TV series called “Star Trek,” he was, like any good Vulcan contemplating a risky mission in a chaotic universe, dispassionate.
Do you think this book will change people’s perspective of your father and their connection to Spock?
I’m still devoted to my dad and the character, and I try to be very careful about that. When I’m writing about him I give him a lot of leeway because of his own parents and their modeling. These Ukrainian refugees who knew nothing about America when they got here. I give my dad a big break because he was desperate to survive. He had no foundation of support when he came out to L.A.; it was just about survival. So he was just not paying attention to the family. I’m always proud of what he accomplished and I’m simply trying to add another dimension to a very complicated man.
He’s flawed, he’s human and has his own foibles, but giving people an in-depth look at him might give them more of a sense of empathy for what he’s been through. After writing the book I have more empathy for my dad because of just the insurmountable odds he overcame.
I’m built differently than my dad. Family was more of a priority to me even when I was pursuing my career. But I was not desperate to survive, to be a self-made man. So it was easier for me to say, “I want to be successful, but my family is just as important to me.”
I had financial backing and support from my parents — my mother is the unsung hero in all this because she was loving, sensitive and supportive, all the things my father simply was not.
It really goes back to the idea that when I was 10 years old, “Star Trek” went on the air; but when my dad was 10 years old, he was selling newspapers on the Boston Common in the dead of winter.
You write about his complicated relationship with William Shatner, which went from tense to extremely close but then fell apart again. Did you ask Shatner about this while working on the book?
I know Shatner’s perspective, Bill loves Leonard, period, And I love Leonard. But loving Leonard is very complicated. And Bill has his own foibles.
I know the whole history because my dad could not control himself when the subject came up; he gave me the whole litany and I know where all the bodies are buried. There were so many frustrations and challenges in the relationship that it’s a miracle they [had] this loving relationship for a few years. That should be celebrated, and that’s where the focus should be.
And the fact of the matter is that when the camera was turned on, those guys are freaking amazing together. It is one of the greatest dynamic duos in the history of pop culture, period.
My dad had trouble working with Jeff Hunter [who played Captain Pike in the 1964 “Star Trek” TV pilot] because Jeff was a very internalized actor. But Bill is like Douglas Fairbanks — he’s got this panache and this love of life, and he’s out there, so my dad could really focus on internalizing his character. We would not have Spock without Bill as Kirk.
Your book celebrates in detail your deep love for your second wife, Martha, who died in 2012. Later on you had a brief marriage to Terry Farrell, who played Jadzia Dax on “Deep Space Nine,” but you don’t mention that at all. Why?
It didn’t work out and I didn’t need to go there. I wanted to honor Terry and what we had by leaving it alone at the moment.
You write a great deal about the places you lived, the neighborhoods you hung out in, the places you went for recovery and your synagogues. How much were you shaped by Los Angeles?
The city does shape you. It’s inevitable. My dad growing up on the streets of Boston molded him to be this guy who was going to be tough and determined and was not going to take no and was going to succeed no matter what. This is part of the problem I have with my dad — in L.A. we have a whole different environment. It’s much more laid back. We have sunny Southern California, we have the beach.
Much of the book is about recovery. What struck me is how much of what you learned seems like things we all should learn, probably starting as kids: “I’m responsible for my second thought and first action” to stop defensive reactions, and the acronym “WAIT,” for “Why Am I Talking?”
You don’t have to be an addict or alcoholic to be in recovery — everybody’s recovering from something and these are just tools to deal with life on life’s terms. This is a big part of my emotional recovery. There are a lot of mantras that come down to, “When somebody pushes your buttons, don’t say a thing and let your mind wind down after it’s spun out of control.”
You were initially angry with your father for never making amends to you as part of his recovery. When you went into recovery you made amends to him, which dramatically improved your relationship. Is there a part of you that still wishes that he had been able to do that for you?
There’s no way guys like him from that generation can look back and say, “Oh, I need to make an apology.” It’s too overwhelming. They can’t pick up the rug and look underneath it. It would devastate them. As soon as I gave up trying to prove to my dad that he was wrong, everything was fine.
And he really showed up for me when Martha was sick. What more can you ask for?
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
