Up Till Now: The Autobiography

all the questions I have about Nerine. But with Elizabeth I have learned that the healing power of a human being is amazing. Both of us grieve for the people we loved—but we found each other and a wonderful, strong new love. As she has taught me every day for all the years we’ve been together, life is for the living.
    I’m an extraordinarily lucky man. To have met someone like Elizabeth at that point in my life is probably about as unlikely as suddenly being cast into a brand-new hit television show and creating a character as popular as Jim Kirk. Or collaborating with major musical talents to make a hit record. Those kinds of things just don’t happen in real life. Except that they did. I’m an extraordinarily lucky man.
    By late 2003 I was again beginning to wonder if my career wasending. I was still receiving offers, but basically they were all a variation of the same theme: William Shatner poking fun at himself. I missed the excitement of creating something new, something different. I was actually sort of resigned to working less often, and the prospect of being free to travel the world with Elizabeth was exciting to me. I thought my career was washed up. I thought, I’ve had my run. Nothing’s going to happen.
    And in some odd way, that was okay with me.
    What I did not know was that producer-writer David E. Kelley’s legendary legal show The Practice was in its last season and he was looking for a way to use the final few episodes to create a new show. The Practice was a gritty and serious drama, but according to producer-director Bill D’Elia, Kelley wanted to do a show that was “bigger, bolder, and funnier.” This would be a show about a major law firm that generally worked huge cases for a lot of money. Unlike most legal shows, in which noble defense attorneys fight in sometimes unorthodox ways for truth and justice, the lawyers in this firm wanted to make a lot of money. Another reality show. At the center of it all was a character named Denny Crane. Kelley told D’Elia that he wanted Denny Crane to be “a legendary attorney, an extremely vain man who makes no bones about his vanity. A man who believes he’s the greatest attorney who ever lived. A man who believes he is kind of above the law, even above traditional morality.” He had to be pompous and sometimes brilliant. He needed someone who could carry all of that—and do it with a sense of humor.
    Get me Shatner.
    I’ve been told that David E. Kelley had seen me doing my Priceline.com commercials and had begun thinking about me for this role he was creating. Eventually David and I and my Hollywood agent Harry Gold had breakfast together. And there David E. Kelley began describing a character he had written for me. A pompous, eccentric, unpredictable, outrageous attorney. Denny Crane. Now, why would he think of me for that role? His plan was to introduce the character in the final few episodes of The Practice to see if there was any chemistrywith the existing characters. If it worked he wanted an option for me to do the new series.
    I called David E. Kelley’s office a few hours later. “I don’t want to do it,” I said.
    Sound effect: The phone drops onto the floor. “What?”
    I’d thought it through, I explained. “If it works it’s going to get picked up for a series and I don’t want to do another series. I’m not going to work every day. I know, you’re going to tell me it’s an ensemble and I don’t have to work every day, but let me tell you something. Every time I’ve done a series I’ve lost a wife. I’m not going to lose this wife. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life sitting around a set. I just don’t want to work that hard anymore.
    “Look, if you want me to do the six episodes of The Practice I’ll do that. But I’m not going to give them an option for a series.”
    Eventually I was convinced that if the show did move forward it would be an ensemble piece. Each actor would have a week to star. It meant that I wouldn’t have to work five days each week and I wouldn’t be responsible for the success of the series. So we negotiated a mutual option that would allow me a limited work schedule if it became a series. And I put on Denny Crane’s immaculately tailored suit for the first time.
    In my first episode of The Practice I was hired to defend James Spader’s character, the intense, socially conscious Alan Shore, who had been fired by his law firm for his somewhat dubious ethical practices