The Untold Truth Of George Takei

For most people, George Takei is the guy who played Hikaru Sulu on Star Trek, but, to others, he's the man that said some highly controversial things as a guest on The Howard Stern Show. Takei wears many masks. Even for those fans that have followed his career closely, his chameleon-like quality in show business makes him difficult to pin down. All at once, he is a pop-culture icon, an author, a Broadway star, an activist, and a social media influencer.

Takei has shown that he's not afraid to speak his mind and, for some, including the Trump family, he can be quite the nuisance. Still, as popular and familiar as Takei appears on the surface, he remains a mystery for many. For that reason, we boldly go beyond Takei's Star Trek fame and explore his rich past filled with trailblazing, controversy, and everything in between. Here is the untold truth of George Takei.

Star Trek fans are well aware of just how groundbreaking the show was, but even for die-hard fans, George Takei's groundbreaking role in the entertainment industry is often overshadowed by that of his co-stars. For example, many are aware that the kiss between Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) was the first interracial kiss on television, but fewer fans recognize just how much Takei blazed a trail for Asian actors. 

"There were very few opportunities, and the few opportunities that there were, were unattractive characters — the villain, the servant, or the buffoon," said Takei. "It was very difficult to get roles where we were human beings." Well, that's what Sulu was on Star Trek – a human being.

With Takei performing this role so well and for so long on such a popular and iconic show, his influence stretched far and wide. "So many people came up and told that, for the first time, they had someone that they could relate to and be proud of when they turn on Star Trek," Takei said. "They saw an Asian character who was not a stereotype, who was, in many ways a hero, who was part of the leadership team of the ship. He didn't talk with an accent. He was a great guy."

Although Takei reportedly "came out" in 2005, he sees the process a little differently. According to an interview with Frontiers, Takei's announcement was "not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It's more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen."

During a talk at South by Southwest Interactive, Takei discussed that journey. "By the time I was nine or 10, I was making discoveries about my sexual orientation," he said, but he worried that being openly gay would "block" his acting dreams. "You live under the fear of being outed all the time," he told The Guardian. "I played the game. I took a female friend to premieres and parties, and then I'd take her home and go to a gay bar. It was a double life." Takei became more outspoken during the AIDS epidemic in the '80s, telling the South by Southwest audience that he began "giving money to all these causes." Around that time, Takei also joined a gay Los Angeles running club called Frontrunners, where he met his future husband, Brad Altman.

It's not unusual for guests on The Howard Stern Show to tell eyebrow-raising stories, but during a 2010 segment of the radio program, George Takei courted controversy when he recalled his earliest sexual encounter, which took place at a summer camp when he was 13 or 14 years old.

In the story, one that Takei repeated during a Reddit AMA and in the To Be Takei documentary, he says he was seduced by a camp counselor that he describes as an "experienced" male about "18 or 19" years old. As the encounter turned sexual, Takei describes it as "frightening, shocking and wonderful." Though Takei insisted the experience was not molestation, he was criticized for romanticizing a potentially dangerous situation. Takei's personal anecdote may not have been harmful to him, but that same situation for another person could easily be construed as assault.

When sexual misconduct allegations surfaced against George Takei in 2017, fans were shocked and many were angered as the actor joined a growing list of alleged wrongdoers in Hollywood. Takei has vehemently denied claims that he groped a model named Scott Brunton at the actor's Los Angeles condo in 1981. Takei said he was "shocked and bewildered" by the accusations made by a man he doesn't remember.

The Observer interviewed Brunton and reported that the accuser's story did present some troubling discrepancies. According to reporter Shane Snow, "just because [Brunton] is inconsistent in his accounts does not mean we should jump to the conclusion that none of this happened at all. Victims often change details, out of panic or memory fallibility." Snow said he also doesn't "fault Takei for feeling unfairly judged, or, at 80 years old, for not remembering Brunton." 

Where does that leave Takei and his reputation? To date, no one else has come forward reporting predatory behavior from Takei, and according to Snow, Brunton said he "just wanted to spur an old friend to reach out and to say sorry for an unwanted situation." Should Takei's "name go on lists alongside rapists and pedophiles? ... Should the story of [his] human rights work be deleted from books? Should the accusation appear in [his] obituary?" Snow asks, noting that those details are on you to decide.

George Takei's Star Trek past attracts plenty of attention because of the show's legacy and because his career was associated with the show for so long, but Star Trek wasn't Takei's first showbiz gig. In fact, he started acting more than a decade before that breakout role.

One of Takei's early jobs was dubbing English voices into the American edits of the Japanese films Godzilla Raids Again and Rodan. "There was one word that we had tremendous difficulty getting the meaning of and finding an English word that fit the lip movement," Takei recalled. "The Japanese word was 'bakayaro,' which means 'stupid fool.' And finally, the director came up with a word, and we tried it and it fit. The English word was: banana oil."

Takei appeared to catch his big break in 1964 when he landed an episode of The Twilight Zone, but that episode, "The Encounter," gain notoriety for the wrong reasons and only aired once. According to Takei, "because it dealt with this young man's father, who was a Japanese-American who signaled Japanese planes that bombed Pearl Harbor, it roused a little controversy, particularly with Japanese-American and Asian-American civil liberties groups."