Chris Pine needed support of Star Trek cast to cope with Anton Yelchin's death
Chris Pine needed his Star Trek Beyond castmates to help him through his grief over actor Anton Yelchin's tragic death.
Anton, 27, starred as the mathematical genius Pavel Chekov in the rebooted Star Trek franchise but died last month (Jun16) in a freak car accident.
And Chris, who plays Captain James T. Kirk in the new films, admits
that his grief after learning of his friend and colleague's death
was so intense he needed his castmates and family to help him
overcome it.
"I don't really know any other way that I would have been able to
deal with it without having my friends and my family around me,"
the 35-year-old tells WENN. "I'm new to that kind of grief and new
to losing people and it's just an awful thing but at least we had
our friends there."
Anton was found by friends pinned in between his Jeep Cherokee car
and a brick pillar after it rolled down a sloping driveway at his
San Fernando Valley home in California.
Bosses at Fiat Chrysler, the manufacturers of the vehicle, launched
an investigation into the accident after it emerged that the
actor's car was a model which had been subject to recall due to a
number accidents.
Speaking at the U.K. premiere of Star Trek Beyond, Chris and
Anton's castmate Zachary Quinto, who plays Mr Spock in the new
film, said that his loss had led to its stars bonding in their
grief.
"Losing Anton is unthinkable for all of us and I think it brought
us closer together through the bonding of grieving his loss," he
says. "But that's a very private thing, it's something that we
experienced together and individually and now it has to be about
celebrating him, celebrating his life and celebrating the
incredible work he did in our films and many others."
Zachary lost another close friend in Leonard Nimoy, the actor who
played Spock in the original Star Trek TV series and films, who
died last year (15) aged 83.
The 39-year-old star has described Leonard as acting as a "father
figure" to him after he handed over the role when the franchise was
rebooted in 2009, a film which saw the elder star appear as an
alternate reality version of Spock.
The new movie's writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung paid tribute to
Leonard in the new film, a decision Zachary agreed with as he
explains, "I think it was very important to honor Leonard's legacy
in this film and it was very important for me personally that we
found a way to include it in the story."
Star Trek Beyond is released in the U.K. and U.S. on 22 July
(16).