Showbiz lost one of its progressive, talented, dedicated greats overnight, as word regrettably came in of Leonard Nimoy‘s passing away. Losing one of the good’uns hurts.
Nimoy’s death has inspired so many reactions to flow, from President Obama (“I loved Spock”) to NASA (So many of us were inspired by Stark Trek. Boldly go…”) to Patrick Stewart (“He won’t be forgotten”), to fans with touching illustrative tributes:
But ‘Simpsons’ showrunner Al Jean‘s tribute to Nimoy stands out, as he told Vulture the story behind Nimoy’s iconic cameo on the show’s classic monorail episode, his humbleness at going along with the jokes, and his ability to spread kindness and warmth.
Nimoy appeared on ‘The Simpsons’ in two of its episodes, and to this day, his line in “The Simpsons Files” is pretty much my favourite ever from the entire show: “The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It’s all lies. But they’re entertaining lies. And in the end, isn’t that the real truth? The answer is: No.”
Read Al Jean’s tribute to Nimoy below.
“When we were producing the Simpsons monorail episode that Conan had written, we were hoping to get George Takei to come back to the show as the celebrity who attends the grand opening of the Springfield Monorail. George had been great in season two, and I would never dream someone as unapproachable (I thought) as Leonard Nimoy would do our show.
To our surprise, George turned down the part; he was on the board of directors of a public monorail and didn’t want to appear in our episode implying they were less than the ideal form of travel. To our astonishment, Leonard said yes, and to our greater astonishment, when we asked him to do corny Spockish lines, like “The cosmic ballet goes on,” and to transport out of Springfield Star Trek–style, he thought it was funny and couldn’t have been nicer or given more hilarious readings.
Later, we asked him to play himself in our X-Files parody, and when we asked him to sing “Good Morning Starshine,” he knew full well we were having a little fun with the solo album he released (and I loved), but again, he could not have been a better sport. He returned in Futurama, and is one of those rare people who seems to have touched with kindness everyone he met. A great actor and a great loss.”
