Whats essential to playing a great Captain Kirk?
CP: There are certain things that are just very inherent to the character. I used the script that Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci wrote as kind of my bible, and that gave me my backstory in the sense of who this guy was and why he was who he was. And going back and watching the series, what I was able to take away from it – what appealed to me about Mr. Shatner’s performance and things that I felt that I could use without hitting people over the head with a bad impersonation – were little physical characteristics. What really appealed to me was the way that he moved about the deck of the ship. He’s got a very theatrical quality, just with his physicality, that just made my smile every time I watched it. There were things about how he sits in the chair that are very small. I felt less is more – in my case, at least. At the end of the day, it really was a conversation between me and [director] J.J. [Abrams]. On any given day, it would be ‘So what do you think about this? Do you think it would
