Picard's Patrick Stewart Solves His Frank Stella Jigsaw Puzzle

Sir Patrick Stewart’s latest appearance on The Graham Norton Show has a “life imitates art” quality to it. At the beginning of Star Trek: Picard, the former Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise D was spending time on his vineyard, not really doing much, except maybe adorably chatting to his doggo in French. Cut to now, and one could argue that there’s a bit of that Picard in a lot of us.

So just how is Stewart passing his time in real life? Solving jigsaw puzzles.

The Emmy-nominated British actor Patrick Stewart was the first guest to appear (along with his wife Sunny Ozell) on The Graham Norton Show and he just couldn’t wait to show off his new hobby – completing 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles.

Graham asked what the couple have been doing during the lockdown period and Sunny answered: 'We’re super fortunate. He’s doing his puzzles and I’m doing some cooking and we’re catching up on television.'

Sir Patrick - *cough* X-Men's Professor Xavier - quickly continued: ‘This is one of my finished puzzles as you can see. It’s actually framed because I framed them all.’

As you should, Patrick, for they are absolute masterpieces.

Showing his latest completed puzzle, he continued: ‘And right here is one I just finished and I’ve got to be so careful because it’s loose. This is a Frank Stella painting done as a jigsaw puzzle. This took weeks.

‘It was very challenging because it’s an abstract piece and that’s what I spend a significant amount of time doing.'

Of all his passions, the one that seems to give him most pleasure is jigsaw puzzles.

'At first I was a little embarrassed about it, as it was something I’d done as a kid. But when I would occasionally mention it, people would whisper: ‘Oh, you do jigsaw puzzles, too? What kind? How many pieces?’ It’s like a secret society.'

Sir Patrick likes to have a puzzle on the go in each of his homes – one in LA, one in Brooklyn, one in London – and he’s currently about a third of the way through an early Cubist portrait of a woman in a chair by Picasso.

“It’s quite tricky as there are big areas of solid colour. But it truly makes you look at the painting and its detail, it teaches you a lot.”

We’d watch Sir Patrick complete his jigsaws all day if we could.

As with all Rest In Pieces’ jigsaws, this Frank Stella puzzle also doubles up as a work of art for your walls once completed; just glue the pieces together and frame away.