PLUME: Now, am I correct in understanding that Little Shop of Horrors took you out to LA?

SPINER: Yeah, that’s what initially brought me out, was doing Little Shop out here.

PLUME: Was LA a preferable environment to New York for you?

SPINER: Well, I’d been in New York for ten years. LA’s not that different from Houston. It’s similar in many ways - certainly the lifestyle is similar. It’s a mobile community as opposed to you being on your feet all the time.

PLUME: And the climate.

SPINER: And the climate… and there’s a lot of swimming pools.

PLUME: Was it difficult finding TV work when you first got out to LA, or was it back to the same cattle call process that you already knew?

SPINER: It was a little different, because when I came out, I didn’t even have an agent out here. I did Little Shop, and on the last night of Little Shop a really great casting director named Lynn Stalmaster came to the show and asked to see me, and I had two jobs the next day…

PLUME: That was a pretty quick turn around.

SPINER: Yeah, it was, it was. It wasn’t like I thought, “Boy, this is unbelievable, let me just drop my line and reel in the fish,” but …

PLUME: “Two jobs the next day, well, I’m making it…”

SPINER: Yeah, exactly. It was a while before I had another one. I went back to New York, did Big River for three months, and then came back out here again. I remember thinking I was sort of in pursuit of fame and fortune. I thought it was actually closer at hand in LA I thought it was more likely, if I could get a television show, that that would happen.

PLUME: This would be around what - 1984, ‘85?

SPINER: Yeah, somewhere in there.

SPINER: I don’t think I have yet, but I did luck into Star Trek pretty quickly. I did a few guest shots. I did Hill Street Blues, and Cheers, and some really great shows. I did a recurring role on Night Court - there were some great guys to work with. I did a pilot of a show called Sylvan in Paradise. It was Jim Nabors, and Courteney Cox, and me, and Ann Wedgeworth, and a couple of other people. It was sort of based on Fawlty Towers, but it was set in Hawaii. I think the thinking was that if it went to series, Jim Nabors - who lived in Hawaii - wanted to shoot there. I played the sort of the Cleese role and he was sort of the Manuel role, but in this case Manuel was the lead.

PLUME: That would have been interesting.

SPINER: Yeah, well, speak for yourself.

PLUME: You in the Cleese role - I can actually envision you quite well in that role.

SPINER: It was a lot of fun, but I remember thinking it was both easy and that I really hoped it did not go to series. And it didn’t. The next pilot season, I got Star Trek.

PLUME: Was that a difficult casting process?

SPINER: I don’t know how difficult. It was difficult in the sense that I had to do several auditions. It was like many, many people wanted to do that series. It was a matter of just whittling down the numbers, and finally it was down to me and a couple other people, and then I wound up getting it.

PLUME: How was the role initially described to you?

SPINER: I remember them not being certain what they wanted, initially - whether they wanted a human sort of character who was an android… who was a machine, but behaved in a sort of human way… or a robot who was very mechanical. Then they said, “We’d rather him be really sort of humanoid type,” and I said, “Okay.” I worked on it, worked on it, and I went in to do the audition, and Junie Lowry - who was the casting director on the movie - came out and said, “They’ve changed their minds, they want the robot.” I said, “Well, I think I’m going to pass.” She said, “Oh. Let me go back in a minute.” She went back in and she came out and said, “They said you can do it anyway you want to for the audition.” So I did, and then I did it that way a few times, and they gave it to me.

PLUME: What was your initial impression of the fact that you were going to be involved with Star Trek?

SPINER: I wasn’t a huge fan. I mean, I definitely was a fan in the sense that I watched all the shows when I was in college, of the original series. But it wasn’t a big deal, because also it was syndicated… you know, I was going to be on a syndicated TV show. The only thing it had going for it, from my point of view, was that it was pre-sold for a year. I thought, “Well, what is syndication? It’s on at a different time, and a different channel, all over America.” So I thought, “Well, I’m going to do this and I’m going to pay off my bills, then I’m going to be out of it; because it surely is not going to last more than a year.”

PLUME: So the main attraction was steady work.

SPINER: Yeah, and the ability to pay my debts. And that it was going to be over in a year, because nobody could do another Star Trek.

PLUME: Was there any point during that first season where your fears that it wouldn’t work were confirmed?

SPINER: No, I really didn’t think about it much. I was enjoying doing it so much, because the cast was so pleasurable to be around. I really didn’t think much about it. We knew pretty early on that we were going to do at least another year, because it was doing okay, numbers-wise.

PLUME: So there was no point where you went, “Nah, I’m just getting a little tired with the role.”

SPINER: Well, definitely… I did that every year. Seriously. Every year at the end of the year, I thought, “Yeah, I don’t know if I’m going to come back and do another year. I’m going to get out of this contract.”

PLUME: With your particular character, does it seem like it was harder to try and introduce colors into it, as opposed to what the other cast members got to do?

SPINER: Well, I thought that was going to be the deal, but it turned out to be just the opposite, because it was about a character who was evolving and growing all the time, and experimenting with different facets of humanity, and playing other characters in order to understand that humanity. It felt limitless, finally.

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