When we think about the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we often think about a group of men and women who are more like family than co-workers. Patrick Stewart, LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn, Brent Spiner, and Marina Sirtis made up the collective of the show's seven-season run.
Others, like Wil Wheaton and Denise Crosby, were a part of the show, but not for as much as the others were. When we think about the tight cast bonds, it's the core seven that most people think about. Yet, they weren't always so chummy.
In fact, Stewart could be, at times, downright rude. A bastard we could say. In a 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Stewart remembers a time when he was less than agreeable to be around, telling the outlet;
""I could be a severe bastard. My experiences at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre had been intense and serious … On the TNG set, I grew angry with the conduct of my peers, and that’s when I called that meeting in which I lectured the cast for goofing off and responded to Denise Crosby’s, ‘We’ve got to have some fun sometimes, Patrick’ comment by saying, ‘We are not here, Denise, to have fun’.""
Now, it should be noted that this was early in the show's run. Long before the crew developed the tight relationship that they have now. This was when Stewart saw himself as a serious man who didn't take things lightly.
Now, just past his 84th birthday, he's a mainstay on Seth MacFarlane's American Dad series, where he voices the debaucherous Avery Bullock, a man who knows how to have a good time. The Stewart from the mid-1980s would likely never do anything so outlandish. So clearly, Stewart has changed and mellowed out as an actor.