Star Trek legend William Shatner has insisted that he’s “perfectly fine” after recent reports claimed he was hospitalized after experiencing a medical emergency.
On Wednesday, TMZ reported that the 94-year-old Canadian actor had been rushed to the hospital due to an issue with his blood sugar. The outlet cited sources who claimed Shatner called the emergency service, and a Los Angeles Fire Department ambulance arrived on the scene as a precaution.
However, Shatner took to X Thursday to set the record straight, writing: “I overindulged. I thank you all for caring, but I’m perfectly fine. I keep telling you all: don’t trust tabloids or AI!”
Alongside the caption, he included an image quoting Mark Twain: “The rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.”
Last year, Shatner opened up about being diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma, a serious type of skin cancer.
“I’m breezing along looking good and feeling good and I noticed a lump on the side of my right ear,” he said in September 2024 at a keynote presentation at the American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting, per Healio. “I went to my family doctor, who said the parotid gland was probably jammed up, and to just massage it and it will go away.”
He said that about a month later, he went to a different doctor, who gave him very different news.
“I went and had [the lump] taken out. It was melanoma, stage 4,” Shatner said. “I said, ‘Stage 4?’ And someone in the room said, ‘Sorry.’ I said, ‘What are you sorry about?’ It was like, ‘Better pack your things.’ That person who said ‘sorry,’ that was very sad, like you are going to die. And I was. They said if this [treatment] they used did not work, I had about 5 months.”
The two-time Emmy winner is best known for helming Starship Enterprise as Captain Kirk, alongside original Star Trek cast members Leonard Nimoy as Spock, DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy, James Doohan as Montgomery Scott, and Nichelle Nichols as Nyota Uhura.
His other roles have included playing a beauty pageant host in the 2000 Sandra Bullock comedy Miss Congeniality and starring as the title character on the 1980s police drama series TJ Hooker. He has also appeared in the legal drama series The Practice and its spin-off, Boston Legal.
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In 2023, Shatner made the documentary You Can Call Me Bill as a way to reach out to his grandchildren after he dies. He told Variety at the time: “I’ve turned down a lot of offers to do documentaries before. But I don’t have long to live.
“Whether I keel over as I’m speaking to you or 10 years from now, my time is limited, so that’s very much a factor.”
