George Takei gets candid about coming out, feud with Trump: 'Biggest Klingon around'
George Takei didn't come out as gay until he was 68, but don't refer to it as his time in the closet.
A more apt word would be "imprisoned," he tells Paste BN. The "Star Trek" actor knows what it's like to be imprisoned – when he was 5 years old, during World War II, soldiers carrying rifles marched up to his house and took him and his family to Japanese internment camps. He spent part of his childhood behind barbed wire.
Takei has written several books, including a first-hand account of his time at those camps in "They Called Us Enemy." In his latest book, "It Rhymes With Takei" (out now from Penguin Random House), the actor gives his most intimate look yet at coming out as gay, as well as a look back at his childhood, adulthood, political activism and acting career.
George Takei shares coming out story in new book
"It Rhymes With Takei" is a graphic novel, an intentional choice to give it accessibility, Takei says. His youth was a "childhood of deprivation," with no radio or newspapers, "moving around at the point of a bayonet," he says.
When his family was released and moved to Skid Row, it was comic books that opened up his world.
Takei hopes his graphic memoir – with bright colors and engaging illustrations by Harmony Becker, Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott – will reach audiences young and old. He especially wants it to resonate with young activists.
The title "It Rhymes With Takei" is a callback to a signature humorous Takei take. In 2011, he fired back at "don’t say gay" legislation introduced in Tennessee by lending his name to the cause because it rhymes (he pronounces his last name ta-kay, not tak-eye). "If you're in a festive mood, you can march in a Takei Pride parade!" Takei said in a 2011 YouTube video.
Takei's first acting gig was pretending to be straight. He realized he was different from his heterosexual peers shortly after his family got out of internment. Today, he uses the word "imprisoned" because that's what it felt like – when he left the barbed wires of his childhood, he felt similarly confined living inauthentically. Though he had relationships with men throughout most of his adult life, he didn't come out until 2005.
In the years leading up to that, he'd watched close friends die from AIDS. He saw more and more activists speaking out. Not being open about his sexuality came "with a sense of guilt," Takei says. Though he'd been with now-husband Brad Altman for 20 years, their relationship was mostly secret. He never felt he could be his "whole self," he writes in the book.
"Here I am protecting my job, my career, what I want to do, while others who had the same difference that I did were sacrificing all that and actively engaging with the larger society and making progress," he tells Paste BN.
The eventual catalyst was when former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would legalize gay marriage in California. In 2008, when it became legal, Takei and Altman were the first same-sex couple to apply for a marriage license in West Hollywood.
Now, two decades after coming out, he's found the "whole" George Takei.
"It feels very liberating," Takei says. "I don't have to be on my guard, kind of mentally fencing and saying what I want to say but without giving myself away. I developed that skill, but now I don't need to. I can be candid and forthright."
George Takei slams Trump, anti-LGBTQ legislation in new book
Among the topics he's unabashedly speaking about is President Donald Trump, who vowed to use the Alien Enemies Act to round up certain groups of immigrants. The same law was used to detain Japanese Americans, like Takei's family.
"We obviously have not learned a lesson from that chapter of American history," Takei says.
Takei has a long history of activism and public service, from volunteering with the Red Cross as a teenager to working on democratic political campaigns to serving on a Southern California committee to initiate and plan the Los Angeles subway system. He was a member of an anti-war activist group in Hollywood alongside Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. He protested nuclear testing and once ran for the LA City Council. Since he came out, he's been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.
In 2013, after he appeared on a season of Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice," Takei met Trump for lunch inside Trump Tower in New York, hoping to make the case for the "financial benefits" of marriage equality to him. He was unsuccessful. Then in 2015, Trump told Time Magazine he might have supported internment. At the time, Takei was starring in a Broadway musical inspired by his family’s internment experience, "Allegiance." Takei saved Trump a seat in the audience every night.
"If you want to see how tough it was from the comfort of your seat, you can be there with us in the camps and get a glimpse of what it was like for families like mine who were unjustly imprisoned thanks to a politics of fear, much like the one you're campaigning on," Takei said in a YouTube video at the time. Trump never showed.
Ten years and two Trump administrations later, Takei fears for the state of democracy under the leader he calls "the biggest Klingon around," a reference to the humanoid alien antagonists in "Star Trek." A few things give him hope, however, namely that "the Republicans are starting to fight amongst themselves."
"Change is constant and change will come," Takei says. "I'm working to make sure that we participate in making it a better, more responsible democracy. No more Klingons."
Clare Mulroy is Paste BN’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.