Patrick Stewart flexes his comedy muscle in ‘Blunt Talk’

LOS ANGELES: Patrick Stewart never really considered himself a funny guy.
After commanding a starship and a team of mutants in sci-fi and superhero franchises, Stewart’s newest mission is starring in his first-ever TV comedy. With his role in Starz’ “Blunt Talk” as naughty newsman Walter Blunt, the classically trained theater actor is discovering at age 75 that he can make folks laugh.
“It’s a fairly recent development,” Stewart said earlier this summer on the show’s set during a break from filming a scene with guest star Jason Schwartzman. “When I first worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, I started in what’s called ‘low comedy’ roles, like Touchstone, Grumio and Lancelot. Then, something happened, and I was only playing deeply disturbed kings and neurotics. I never really went back.”
While he’s best known as Professor Charles Xavier and Captain Jean-Luc Picard from the “X-Men” and “Star Trek” series, Stewart has spent more of his career onstage than in the X-Mansion or on the USS Enterprise. Besides playing everyone from Claudius to Macbeth, he’s performed a one-man rendition of “A Christmas Carol” and finished a West End and Broadway run last year of Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” with buddy Ian McKellen.