Here's the absolute truth why I left Star Trek. I left Star Trek because it was seriously interfering with my career in feature films. I was in a situation where I was constantly having to pass on really good movie roles because I was on the series. I had a film career before Star Trek. People knew me before Star Trek. As a matter of fact, at Comic Con, a lot of people came up to me and said, "I started watching Star Trek because you were on it and I was fan of yours from Stand By Me and I stopped watching it after you left." I had a lot of people say that to me.
After something like this had happened a lot of times, this was finally the last straw: I had been cast by Milos Foreman to be in Valmont. I had gone through lots and lots of callbacks, I had met Milos personally a number of times and he was really supporting me and telling me, "I want you in my movie." I was going to go to Paris and I was going to be in this movie and stuff and what happened was we were going to shoot it during the hiatus and the shooting schedule for Valmont would have carried me over about a week into the regular season schedule into Star Trek. I would have had to sit out the first episode of the year, right. That's not a big deal, it's not like I'm the fuckin' Captain, you know. At that point, I was the guy who pushed buttons and said, "Yes, sir!" So, I said to the people on Star Trek, "I need to be written out of this particular episode, because I'm going to do this movie and my film career's going to take off." This is after Gene Roddenberry had died. Had Gene been alive, it would have been no problem at all, because Gene was that kind of guy. Gene would have said, "Great! Go ahead, you do what you need to do," because he was that kind of person. After Gene died, a very different type of person took over and they said, "We can't write you out because the first episode of the season is all about you. It focuses entirely on your character and it's your story..." So, he said to me, "The story is entirely about you, we can't write you out." I said, "Well, this really sucks, but I'm under contract to you guys and if that's your call and if that's what you say I have to do, I have to do." I had to pass on the movie.
A couple of days before the season was ready to premiere, they wrote me out of the episode entirely. What they were doing was they were sending me a message. The message was, "We own you. Don't you ever try to do anything without us." That was the last straw for me. I called my agents and said, "They don't own me. It's time for me to leave this show, it's time for me to be gone." That's what really pushed me over the edge. It's not worth it anymore. That's why I left.
