William Shatner shares his initial reaction to finding out Michael Myers wears a mask of his face
"Is that a joke? " Shatner thought to himself after learning of the Halloween killer's mask origins
Michael Myers’ mask is instantly recognizable with its ghostly white paint job, hollowed-out eyes, and unsettling brown hair. Halloween fans know that the original mask worn in the first movie was actually a modified version of Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk.
The mask’s “makeover” (or shall we say make-under) made the finished product look nothing like William Shatner—but after finding out that one of horror’s biggest killers is wearing his mask, the actor himself wasn’t exactly flattered.
In a chat with Shatner for his YouTube channel Jakes Takes, Jake Hamilton asked, “Do you remember the first moment someone said, ‘Hey, do you know the Halloween mask is you?’”
Shatner replied, “I don’t remember the exact moment but I thought ‘Is that a joke? Are they kidding?’ And then I saw—I don’t think I saw the movie, but I saw the mask probably in the picture and I recognized it as the death mask that they had made for me… they made a mask of my face on Star Trek with clay so that 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 that they were making me look like.”
“That mask existed in Star Trek so somewhere along the line, somebody got that mask and made a mask of it for Halloween [the holiday, not the movie]. And then the story is ‘Get me a mask,’ said the director [John Carpenter], so the guy ran into this Halloween store and grabbed this mask and it happened to be of me.”
It’s not the first time Shatner’s talked about being the face of Michael Myers.
In fact, there’s a video where he talks to his daughter Lisbeth on camera, reminiscing about the time he wore the mask on Halloween while trick-or-treating with his daughters.