William Shatner thought it was a joke when somebody told him 'Halloween' uses a mask of his face for Michael Myers
- William Shatner thought it was a joke when he learned "Halloween" used a mask of his face.
- "I don't remember the exact moment but I thought, 'Is that a joke? Are they kidding?'" he said.
William Shatner said he thought it was a joke when he first found out that Michael Myers uses an altered Captain Kirk mask in the "Halloween" movies.
The "Star Trek" actor opened up about involuntarily becoming a part of the iconic slasher franchise in a September chat with Jake Hamilton of the YouTube account "Jake's Take."
"I don't remember the exact moment but I thought, 'Is that a joke? Are they kidding?'" Shatner said about finding out that Michael actually wears a mask of Shatner's face while murdering everyone in sight.
Shatner explained that he never saw "Halloween" (1978) but he noticed the mask in a picture and recognized it as "the death mask" that "Star Trek" producers made of his face so that Shatner "wouldn't have to be available for the prosthetics that they would put on my face to look old or evil" on the show.
"So, that mask has existed in 'Star Trek.' Somewhere along the line, someone got that mask and made a mask of it for Halloween," Shatner continued.
He added that, as far as he knows, the director of the original "Halloween" film wanted a mask for the movie and someone from production bought the Captain Kirk mask at a Halloween store. As a result, Shatner's face ended up becoming the disguise Michael uses to hide his identity while wreaking havoc on Haddonfield.
"That's the story I know, how true it is - I don't know," Shatner clarified.
Shatner played Captain Kirk on three seasons of the TV show "Star Trek: The Original Series" between 1966 and 1969, and in seven film sequels released between 1979 and 1994.
More recently, 90-year-old Shatner became the oldest person in space after he made a successful round trip to outer space and back on Friday on board a Blue Origin flight.
The version of the story that the actor shared on "Jake's Takes" about how his face became a part of Michael's legacy lines up with what "Halloween" production designer and editor Lee Wallace revealed in a 2019 episode of the Netflix docuseries "The Movies That Made Us."
According to the New York Post, Wallace explained in the documentary that he bought the Captain Kirk mask at a store on Hollywood Boulevard while looking for something scary for Michael to wear in the movie.
Wallace then tweaked the mask slightly for "Halloween" by making the eye holes bigger, dying the hair darker, and painting the face white. And that's how the creepy mask we all know and love was created.