“(Bleep) My Dad Says” Father Makes Peace with Shatner

Justin Halpern's fantastic Twitter page about living with his 74-year-old father is the success story of the year. CBS has announced the resulting sitcom has a premiere date of Sept. 23.

And Halpern's now-famous father has accepted the fact that the character based on him will be played by William Shatner when "(Bleep) My Dad Says" hits the airwaves.

Halpern says that Shatner was his first choice to play the role of his sharp-tongued and outrageous father onscreen. But retired doctor Sam Halpern had other ideas, however improbable.

"My father thought he should be played by James Earl Jones," Halpern tells PopcornBiz. "He says (Jones') voice is the greatest in the world."

Let's put aside the fact that Sam Halpern is not African-American. Beyond that Justin also admits that his father "has a voice like Foghorn Leghorn." So let's just say that James Earl Jones did not get a call for this part.

Meanwhile, Shatner hit the role "out of the park" during the taping of the pilot which was picked up by CBS, says Justin.

"He's such a unique kind of actor, you never know what you're going to get with him," he adds. "He brought a really interesting take on it."

Sam Halpern was at the pilot filming and too became convinced that "the Star Trek fella" (whom he hadn't heard of previously) was right for the part.

"He was way into it," says Halpern.

Truth be told, if Shatner had decided not to do the sitcom, Justin Halpern did have an alternate choice.

"My second choice was 'Deadwood' star Ian McShane," says Halpern. "But he might have scared the crap out of middle-America though."

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