Stewart told "The Late Late Show with James Corden" on Wednesday that he was reluctant to star in "The Next Generation" because he had to sign a six-year contract.
"I couldn't accept what it was I'd taken on," Stewart said. "I had one or two connections in TV and I said, 'What should I do? I just learned that I had to sign a six-year contract.' There was a list of plays I had to do. Shakespeare lined up and I said, 'I can't do this.'"
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The English actor continued: "My agent said, 'Look, you know you cannot revive an iconic show. You cannot. It's not going to work, so just come over here. Do a dozen episodes, maybe less, and make some money for the first time in your life and go home.' That was the prediction for me — six months, no more."
During an appearance on "The Graham Norton Show" in 2020, the "X-Men" star said that he was going to turn down the opportunity to reprise his role in "Picard" because he had publicly said he wouldn't return as the character.
"I took the meeting with four very, very distinguished people, and I didn't want to just say, 'No, pass.' I don't do that anymore. So I went to the meeting in order to explain to them face-to-face why I couldn't do it... and then," Stewart said, implying that they were able to persuade him to change his mind.
On "The Late Late Show," Stewart said that real-life plane captains began inviting him into the cockpit on flights after he became famous for playing a spaceship captain.
"At the beginning, I was continually being invited onto the flight deck once the plane was in the air and flying," Stewart said. "It happened once that I was at the controls and you're not going to believe this… I was on the flight deck of Concorde and what I did was press the two middle buttons of the four buttons that activated the engines into supersonic."
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The British Airways Concorde is a Franco-British supersonic plane from the 20th century.
All three seasons of "Star Trek: Picard" are available to stream on Paramount+.
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