William Shatner blasts Sandie Rinaldo: ‘CTV won’t interview me again’

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As longtime CTV anchor Sandie Rinaldo celebrates her momentous 50^th anniversary with the network, she is looking back at her most notable interviews to help mark her milestone.

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But after sharing an anecdote about profiling William Shatner, first 29 years ago and again for an hour-long special that aired this week, Rinaldo has rankled the iconic Star Trek actor to the point where he has vowed to never speak to the broadcast outlet again.

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Rinaldo introduced the clip of her new interview with Shatner, calling their 1994 chat her “most challenging.”

“I will never forget the day I tried to interview William Shatner; tried being the operative word … no one prepared me for what was to happen; I would come face to face with a force of friction,” Rinaldo said.

Rinaldo recounted how she tried to get him to open up, asking him about his life growing up in Montreal. “He shut me down, didn’t want to talk about himself and abruptly ripped off his microphone and stormed out.”

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“You are still a little bit cantankerous,” she said to Shatner in their new interview, telling the actor, “I need the eye contact.”

As he looked away from her, she said, “It’s going to be this type of interview, I can tell.”

Rinaldo then confronted Shatner, telling him “There are people who haven’t liked you along the way.”

“You think so?” Shatner responded. “I can’t imagine that no one would not like me along the way.”

When Rinaldo suggested that their conversation should take a different turn, Shatner snapped, “Are you capable of doing something differently? … Look into yourself … are you able to do a different kind of interview?”

When she told him that their last sitdown didn’t go well, Shatner asked, “Was it cantankerous? Maybe you bring out cantankerousness. I have no recollection of it whatsoever.”

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When she asked him if he was going to leave again, Shatner said, “You leave. It’s my office!”

“In true form Shatner was still irascible, difficult and yet this time also lovable and funny,” Rinaldo said, recounting their long-awaited catch-up. “The banter between us mostly bordered on the absurd. Did I learn anything new about him? Not really. Did I laugh a lot? I sure did. Did he walk out on me? He most definitely did not. An eight-minute interview, the time allotted again this time, morphed into an hour.”

But the edited interview — which runs roughly seven minutes — didn’t land so well with the 92-year-old when one fan tagged him on X and said, “I just watched your interview with Sandie Rinaldo. Very disappointed in you; that’s all I can say.”

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“It appears she had an agenda,” Shatner fired back. “Her @CTVNews producer called begging for a 30 min interview. I relented and said OK when I usually only give national outlets 15-20 mins. She then took an hour asking ridiculous questions. I feel it was to get a bad interview so she could play victim for ratings. Read her article. @CTV should be ashamed for airing the embarrassment of their employee’s agenda. I am ashamed of the yellow journalism that Canadian news reporters appears to stoop to for eyeballs. CTV won’t be interviewing me again after this — so you have nothing to worry about.”

“She should absolutely be ashamed of herself, as should CTV news,” one fan wrote, responding to Shatner’s message, with another adding, “Sad that reputation destruction is such a staple of modern society.”

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One person suggested that going forward Shatner demand a deposit from journalists.

“Next questionable media outlet begging for an interview, ask for a large deposit and if everything goes well they get the deposit back. If not, then you get paid for an acting job [in] a TV fiction piece.”

Shatner later returned to X after another follower tried to chide him for using his phone partway through their exchange.

“He was on his f***ing phone in the middle of an interview,” the critic railed. “If that’s not rude (and adolescent) I don’t know what is.”

“I thought we were having small talk which is why I looked up the word,” Shatner hurled back. “It’s just unprofessional. Then again, the pre-roll with the questions she asked others, including Clint Eastwood — chiding and insinuating he was choosing to not (be) a part of his son’s life? She seems proud of that question.”

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Postmedia has reached out to CTV for comment.

For the record, we’ve interviewed Shatner many times over the years (one of which you can watch right here on this story). He’s spoken to us about his travel into space, the meaning of Captain Kirk’s final line and the secret to a long life. He also once shared his motto with us, and it’s something we still like thinking about: “There’s always tomorrow.”

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X: @markhdaniell

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