Shatner Rules

demanded the tape. My daughter started crying, the
reporter
started crying, and I stormed out.
    Apparently, when there is an unnatural death of someone at an early age, there’s a good chance a family member was involved, and—for the briefest period of time—I was a suspect in Nerine’s death. It’s standard operating procedure. The husband is
always
the first suspect. But I was cleared within minutes of the police arriving at my home.
    I was cleared in the eyes of the law, anyway. In the jaded and jaundiced eyes of the tabloid press? Well, that’s a different, under-researched story.
    And within days of her death, as I was experiencing a whirlpool of emotions, grief coming from many different directions all at once, dragging me down, I got a phone call from
The National Enquirer
. They were going to run a story saying that I was the prime suspect in the murder of my wife.
    They offered me money to participate in the story, to tell my side. If I didn’t play ball, they were going to run with the angle that I was a murderer.
    What would you do? Probably the same thing I did.
    I gave them my story, took their money, and used every cent of it to fund the Nerine Shatner Friendly House, a center for women recovering from alcohol and substance abuse. It’s a home where up to twenty women at a time can get the help they need to fight their addictions.
    Did you know that? Maybe you didn’t. But you probably heard some of the allegations about my supposed role in her death. That’s because in America, you are guilty on page 1, and exonerated on page 30. (Also, many tabloid reporters can’t spell “exoneration,” so they decide to skip the whole thing entirely.)
    And I wanted
Aftermath
to be a show where the exonerated—and the punished—could speak, long after the press had packed up their microphones and moved onto the next scandal. I want to give people a pulpit to tell their side of the story—their truth—after they’ve been declared guilty by the press and the public.
    I know what condemnation in the media feels like, and it is a terrible thing. It follows you like a comet’s tail. So I want to use the media as a tool to give some strength back to these people, no matter what their story.
    And that’s why I’m doing
Aftermath
.
    My interview with Mr. Goetz ended, and I began to pack up my things and get ready to go home. He came up to me and asked for a favor. After I was convinced that the gun had been taken away, I agreed.
    “Can I get a picture?” he asked, holding his camera phone.
    Bernhard Goetz and I took a picture together, and I gave him an autograph. I made it out to him alone. If the squirrel wants one, he can come to the next convention.

CHAPTER 20
RULE: Talk Is Cheap—Unless You Can Make Money with a Talk Show
    “H ey, Bill,” my producer said, rushing into my office. “We got Meat Loaf.”
    “Oh, all right,” I sighed, pulling myself up from my desk. “I’ll go easy on the gravy and make sure I spend a little more time on the StairMaster tonight.”
    “No,” she sighed. “Meat Loaf—Meat Loaf as a guest.”
    “What the hell is a Meat Loaf?”
    I really didn’t know. I really thought she was talking about food. There appeared to be a very large gap in my pop culture knowledge, one large enough to fit Marvin Lee Aday—the actor and singer who would gain fame as Meat Loaf after selling 43 million copies of his debut album
Bat Out of Hell.
    I was going to interview him for a few hours as a guest on
Raw Nerve
, my talk show on the Biography Channel.
    And yes, during the course of our interview, Meat Loaf made me cry.
    I’ve been a guest hundreds of times on as many different talk shows. I’ve lost count—I see things on YouTube that I don’t even remember doing. I’ve been interviewed by Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, Alan Thicke, Arsenio Hall, all the ladies on
The View,
all the ladies on
The Talk
, Bill O’Reilly, Oprah, Ellen, Tony Danza, Donny Deutsch, Tom Snyder, Ryan Seacrest, Wayne Brady, Dinah Shore, Graham Norton, Richard and Judy, Crook and Chase, Regis and Kathie Lee, Regis and Kelly, Rosie O’Donnell, Larry King, Howard Stern (many, many times), too many other shock jocks to remember, Henry Rollins, Glenn Beck, Joan Rivers, Jon Stewart, David Brenner, Craig Kilborn, Johnny Carson, the teams at
Good Morning America
and
The
Today Show,
Jimmy Kimmel, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Craig Ferguson, and George Lopez, and I’ve been on Conan O’Brien’s shows more