Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Kirk and Uhura Kiss: Rodenberry, Shatner, and Nichols Stand Up To Censors



The NBC executives demanded the scene be shot without the kiss regardless of script. Creator producer Gene Rodenberry insisted it be shot as scripted. William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols had already decided to stick to the script regardless of censors and critics. So it was shown as shot in the Star Trek Original Series episode “Plato's Stepchildren", season 3 episode 10, first broadcast on this day in 1968. The first legitimate kiss between a white man and an African American woman.

Television historians will dicker over whether this was the first interracial kiss or not as Shatner had kissed French actress France Nuyen, who is of Asian descent. While there were a handful of kisses one could point to this kiss on Star Trek was between the shows main protagonist and lead female character. It was a major shift in levels of attention. Star Trek was a popular show, even though it would be canceled due to cost vs ratings at the end of this third season. It was also a clear kiss with sexual tension between the two characters and not an off-hand gesture. The plot device allowed for it to be something for Rodenberry and the actors to step away from but also build on if the was a reason too. As the years have passed the growth of Star Trek as a culture touchstone has also allowed the kiss to take on a significance other earlier moments simply do not have.

Producers and NBC executives were extremely concerned about southern viewership and ordered that a scene without the kiss be filmed but Shatner and Nichols simply did things in each take to screw that up from Shatner crossing his eyes to really flubbing it

As Nichols recounts:

Knowing that Gene was determined to air the real kiss, Bill shook me and hissed menacingly in his best ham-fisted Kirkian staccato delivery, "I! WON'T! KISS! YOU! I! WON'T! KISS! YOU!"

It was absolutely awful, and we were hysterical and ecstatic.

In fact there is no record that NBC ever received any negative phone calls or letters. According to Rodenberry and Nichols most of the letters were from girls inquiring what it was like to kiss Kirk or Uhura.

Nichols observed that "Plato's Stepchildren", received a huge response.

“We received one of the largest batches of fan mail ever, all of it very positive, with many addressed to me from girls wondering how it felt to kiss Captain Kirk, and many to him from guys wondering the same thing about me. However, almost no one found the kiss offensive," except from a single mildly negative letter from one white Southerner who wrote: "I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any time a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it."

The kiss might have become just a relic to the past as television evolved except that Star Trek did go on to it's own evolution and become one of the most powerful cultural phenomena of all time.

Sources:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/108958268/star-treks-interracial-kiss-50-years-ago-heralded-change

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/star-trek-s-interracial-kiss-50-years-ago-went-boldly-n941181

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_and_Uhura%27s_kiss


 

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