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DeForest Kelley On...

the McCoy Character

Landing the Role
Naming McCoy
Acting McCoy
McCoy's Personality
The Spock/McCoy relationship
McCoy's Romances
The Joanna McCoy story-line
Medical Treknology

Landing the Role
How did I get that role? Well, I had done 333 Montgomery for Gene, and then I did another pilot called Police Story that didn’t sell. And he had wanted me for... he wanted me originally for Star Trek but the networks were backing off of me because I had established myself as such a heavy. And they couldn’t see me as a doctor. They didn’t know I was an actor, not a doctor. So when I did Police Story for him, they sent that thing out on what they call reactions, and people go in and they look at these films, and they push little buttons if they like you and that sorta thing. And I called Gene to thank him for having put me in two pilots and he said, “Don’t hang up,” he said, “NBC saw that show and they said they liked you in it,” and he said, “they want you for the doctor now.” So, that’s how I got it.
[Convention: Los Angeles, 10/24/87]

If I could choose any role in Star Trek, would I choose Dr. McCoy and why? Yes. I had done two pilot films for Gene Roddenberry before Star Trek. I met Gene Roddenberry in 1960. I went to San Francisco to portray a famous criminal lawyer there in a series for Gene for CBS which did not sell. And I won't go into the whole thing of how I finally ended up in Star Trek, but when he screened the pilot for me that he had made with John Hoyt and I saw that one scene in sickbay with the captain, I said to myself, I would like to do that role if the role had a chance to grow at all. I would have picked McCoy of them all.

I'll tell you a true story. I know that Roddenberry's probably forgotten this, but before we started Star Trek, Gene called me and I went over and had lunch with him at the studio one day. And he said, "De, I've got two properties that I have a chance to develop. One of them is a science fiction show and there's a character in there that would be very interesting." Now I'd been doing all these westerns and I was just coming out of the westerns. I'd done Where Love Has Gone and I was beginning to move along pretty good again. And he said, "There's a character in there, an alien, who is a little on the green side with pointed ears." Now, I was not a science fiction fan, I've never been, you know. And I looked at him and he said, "There's another one called High Noon that they're going to do." I said, "I'll take High Noon, forget about Star Trek." But he was attempting to offer me that role before Leonard and I'm very glad he gave it to Leonard because he is so much better than I would have ever been in it. I don't think I would have... Gene may have been on something that day. (laughter) Yes?
[Convention: Midcon, England, September 1986, transcribed in Guyer, 1993.]

Naming McCoy
Did my character named Leonard McCoy have anything to do with Leonard Nimoy? You know, I have often thought about that from time to time and wanted to mention it to Gene Roddenberry because Gene Roddenberry has a really weird sense of humor. (Laughter) I often thought it just couldn't be accidental. It wouldn't surprise me a bit that he had done that on purpose.
[Convention: Baltimore, July 1985, transcribed in Guyer, 1991.]
Acting McCoy
Did I have any input into the character of Dr. McCoy? Gene Roddenberry had laid out a character analysis for each of us. And so I more or less followed what he had written, with the... I had had previous conversation... Gene knew me so well before then, and Gene knew that I originally was from the South, and he incorporated that into the character. But he had patterned him more or less after a future-day H.L. Mencken type of character and the rest of it more or less evolved.
[Convention: Los Angeles, 10/24/87]

What are the similarities between me and Dr. McCoy? I think he has more patients than I do. [laughter] I don’t know, I think that there’s a little bit of each one of us in these characterizations. I never thought about it until a number of years afterwards, but when I look at Bill, Bill has always been an extremely active, athletic guy who likes to try everything in the world. Leonard is a very bright, intellectual man. And I am the laziest man God ever made. We’ve all got a little of everything in us.

[Convention: Dearborn, 7/19/87]

When do I start being the doctor? It depends on my call. At eight o'clock I start being McCoy. The minute I see Spock, I become McCoy. (Laughter and applause)

[Convention: Baltimore, July 1985, transcribed in Guyer, 1991.]

How much medical knowledge did I absorb being Dr. McCoy? I don’t know; I’ve always been interested in medicine. I read a great deal about medicine periodically. The one thing I did learn, I used to go to Edwards Air Force Base with Gene Roddenberry. He’d go up there and see what they were doing and try to project it 50 or 100 years. They had a medical tricorder; we didn’t even know it. They wondered where we got it - that the pilot carried with him, that gave his heartbeat, blood pressure, whatever a test pilot was doing, that sort of thing. I didn’t really absorb too much from medicine as we know it. I learned a lot about what we’re going to do. Today I see that a lot of that is in practice now. So, it was a wonderful experience.

[Convention: Dearborn, 7/19/87]
McCoy's Personality [why do you feel that McCoy went into space in the first place?]
I don't think McCoy is too much of a space nut, really. I think he's there as a last resort, maybe. No, I don't know. When we did Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry laid out a very carefully designed characterization plan for us. He knew pretty well what he wanted and he knew that these characters should retain their identity in the way in which he wanted them to play these roles. And that's the way that I have played McCoy. I've tried to stay with the original characterization as he intended it, besides getting a little grumpier as he gets older.
[Convention: Midcon, England, September 1986, transcribed in Guyer, 1993.]

I’m a doctor, not a fighter. Can you imagine that? She wants to know why Kirk and Spock are always doing the fighting and I’m standing in the background. For those of you in the back, that’s why I said that. Can’t you ever get it in your head, I’m a doctor? [grins]

[Convention: Los Angeles, 10/24/87]
The Spock/McCoy relationship
[Q: Spock/McCoy banter - was it ad-libbed?]
No, at first a slight confrontation was written into one of the early scripts and I don’t know, I looked at Leonard in a funny way and Leonard looked back at me and the director thought that was amusing. So we... it was just one little sequence and then when it was viewed, the people in the dailies said, you know, there’s a good thing going here. So they started to write for it more and so it was more or less built upon that way. We added, every now and then we’d throw something in, you know, a little.
[Convention: Vulkon, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 1/17/88]

[Why did McCoy needle Spock?]
I just always felt that Spock was really a lonely soul that never really had any contact with the joys of life until it was time to swim upstream. I don't know. A mind like a calculator and ears like Satan. I don't know, I just... it was sympathy mixed with irritability. He still gets on my nerves. (laughter) He's a green-blooded son of... (applause)

[Convention: Midcon, England, September 1986, transcribed in Guyer, 1993.]

Would I enjoy seeing Spock and McCoy being closer in the future than in the past? No, I don't think so. In fact, if I could convince them, I'd like to tell the writers I'm pretty ticked off in the fact that he lived.(Laughter) He really made a monkey out of me. How am I going to convince him I hate him anymore? But no, I don't really think so. I think that Spock and McCoy have always had a deep down respect for each other, each in his own way, and I think the difference between the two temperaments that exist are a plus for the show.

[Convention: Baltimore, July 1985, transcribed in Guyer, 1991.]

McCoy's Romances Would I like to see Dr. McCoy have a love interest in the future? It's always interesting, you know. (Laughter) I like to see what they do with it. (Smiles) But if it were something meaningful and sensible, moving in some sort of an adult way, I would enjoy that Yes, I hope.
[Convention: Baltimore, July 1985, transcribed in Guyer, 1991.]
The Joanna McCoy Story-line
In the series, what storyline would I like to see written for the character McCoy that we never really made? There was a story that we never had a chance to get to. We had anticipated if we had gone another year, McCoy's daughter Joanna coming aboard and having a romance with Bill Shatner. (applause) You don't think that would have ticked the good doctor off? (laughter) Nobody knows more what a ladies man Bubble Butt was! (applause)
[Convention: Baltimore, July 1985, transcribed in Guyer, 1991.]

Medical Treknology
Technology breakthrough equal to when Star Trek took place? (Stutters on technology) Sounds like one of the lines they used to give me. How far ahead would we be now as opposed to when the series started? I think we would progress fifty to a hundred years beyond because, as I told you before, Gene Roddenberry used to go to Edwards Air Force Base. I went with him a couple of times and he went there to find out what they were experimenting with and he would come back and project fifty to a hundred years beyond that Now they had the medical tricorder at that time in a modified form, the test pilots were wearing it in a pocket on their leg, that was giving them the heartbeat, blood pressure, and all the different readings then. So you can see how fast this moved. But I don't know how they're going to deal with this story, what they're going to do. It might have to go back to the old cowboy western doctor. I don't think there will be much of the equipment around when we're running and jumping.
[Convention: Baltimore, July 1985, transcribed in Guyer, 1991.]

Whose idea was it that the medical instruments were to be salt shakers? That had to be the property man, I had nothing to do with it. But actually, they really... everybody thought they were... They were not... They looked like ‘em, they certainly did look like ‘em. But they really weren’t designed as salt and pepper shakers. What is the next one?

[Convention: Los Angeles, 10/24/87]