“Are they kidding?”: William Shatner’s reaction to Halloween mask
William Shatner recently shared his reaction after discovering the iconic mask used in Michael Myers’ Halloween franchise was actually based on his likeness.
In a recent interview with the YouTube channel Jake’s Takes, Shatner spoke about how he first found out that the mask was his face and thought it was a joke.
The host, journalist Jake Hamilton, asked: “Do you remember the first moment someone said, ‘Hey do you know the Halloween mask is you?”
“I don’t remember the exact moment but I thought, ‘Is that a joke? Are they kidding?’,” the Star Trek actor said.
Though he recalled he didn’t watch the horror film, he said he saw it for the first time in a photo, and recognised it as the “death mask” that was made for him during his time on the sci-fi classic.
“They made me a mask of my face on Star Trek with clay so I wouldn't have to be available for the prosthetics that they would put on my face to look old or evil or whatever it was they were making me look like,” he explained.
The mask modelled on Shatner’s face for Star Trek alongside the repurposed mask used in the Halloween series. Image: startrek.com
“So somewhere along the line, someone got that mask and made a mask of it for Halloween [the holiday].
“And then the story is ‘Get me a mask’, said the director, so the guy ran into this Halloween store and grabbed this mask and it happened to be of me.
“That’s the story I know. How true it is I don’t know.”
According to the New York Post, production designer and editor Tommy Lee Wallace told the story on Netflix’s The Movies That Made Us of how he found the mask at a magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard.
“Up on the shelves were these full face masks of Richard Nixon, and down at the end was Mr Spock. And right next to it was this blank face of Captain Kirk,” Wallace said on the show.
After painting it white, making the eye holes wider, removing the eyebrows, and dyeing the hair brown, the iconic Halloween mask was born.
Image: Getty Images