Something on Saul Rubinek

So here’s a real true story, and the nerdiest revelation I will ever consciously make. In my kidhood, I was a huge HUGE fan of Star Trek, the version now usually asterisked, of necessity, as The Original Series. It was one of the many things my best friends and I bonded over. We watched it in syndication every day for years. I have probably seen every episode a half dozen times. It was formative in my aesthetics. You will find that reflected in my unapologetic apology for William Shatner. What others call “ham acting” or “overacting”, I merely call “acting”. Most actors, the quotidian ones, the “relatable” ones, the “real” ones, bore me to distraction, and I want to slap them, or connect them with jumper cables to a car battery or something. None of them know how to talk, or project, or play anything besides some junior high school version of themselves. And by this I mean nearly ALL contemporary Hollywood actors.

Anyway, one day, circa the mid ’90s, I was watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was not a huge fan of the show, but I was binging it, as I was contemplating writing a spec episode. (Why do that, since I wasn’t a fan? Because I knew the “universe” of it, so it seemed doable. I was fresh out of NYU. I also wrote spec episodes of Married…With Children,The Simpsons, and Herman’s Head, as a I recall). And why wasn’t I a fan of The Next Generation since I was a such a huge fan of The Original Series? Duh! I wasn’t a fan of TNG BECAUSE I was a fan of TOS! I found the stories and the casts of the new show soporific in the extreme. It’s supposed to be a space opera, not a soap opera! I’d say the new show wanted to make me take a bottle of sleeping pills…but NO BOTTLE OF SLEEPING PILLS REQUIRED, KNOW WHAT I’M SAYIN’?! Anyway, like I say, one day I was watching an episode of TNG midway through the third season when an actor came on screen who made me perk up and pay attention. I almost couldn’t believe my ears and eyes. I mean, how did he slip through? I said to myself, “THIS! THIS is what this show has been missing from its very first episode! The fun, the size, the playfulness, the music! What exhilaration! What a gas! NOW! NOW I feel like I’m actually watching Star Trek!”

The actor was of course Saul Rubinek (b. 1948). It probably wasn’t my first glimpse of him, but as with many actors, his film parts were smaller, the tv guest shots much more showy. And he was Canadian, so he wasn’t constantly on American TV, though I’d be grateful if he was. And — of course — he was on The Next Generation accidentally, because of he course he was. He was a last minute replacement for another actor because OF COURSE they weren’t actually SEEKING someone that interesting and animated. Amusingly, at the time, my instinct was that the producers HAD sought him out, because his casting seemed like a nod to someone from the old show, the great Stanley Adams, who had played the recurring character Cyrano Jones. Ya, know, a stout, funny character actor with obvious Shakespeare chops. That’s the kind of thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.

Rubinek has hundreds of stage and screen credits. I’ve only seen a small portion of them. I’ll tick off some things you might know him from. He had a recurring role as Donny Douglas on Frasier (1999-2002). He’s in such films as Young Doctors in Love (1982), Against All Odds (1984), Sweet Liberty (1986), Wall Street (1987), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Unforgiven (1992), True Romance (1993), new fewer than TWO Nixon movies: Nixon (1995, as Herb Klein) and Dick (1999, as Henry Kissinger), Bad Manners (1997),Baadasssss!(2003), and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018). His tv movies include Gleason (2002), The Brady Bunch in the White House (2002), And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003), and Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss (2004). Work for Steven Bochco on Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue led to a regular role on the short-lived Blind Justice (2015). He was also a regular on the SyFy series Warehouse 13 (2009-2014). Recent stuff includes appearances on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Billions, and Schitt’s Creek.

Rubinek studied at the Ottawa Little Theatre in the mid ’60s and began acting professionally at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival shortly thereafter. He was a co-founder of the Toronto Free Theatre, now known as the Canadian Stage Company.

In his 1988 book So Many Miracles, Rubinek describes his parents sufferings during the Holocaust. They were Polish Jews, who hid out from the Nazis during World War Two. Rubinek was born in Föhrenwald, a displaced-persons camp in Allied-occupied Germany. His first language was Yiddish, and he also learned French. English was his third language, and it took him some time to shed his accent. In fall 2024 and spring 2025, Rubinek starred in the thought-provoking one man show Playing Shylock at Canadian Stage in Toronto — which made this seem like a good time to sing his praises. The guy is excellent.