Star Wars' James Earl Jones Thought Darth Vader's Big Reveal Was A Complete Lie
For a certain generation, spoilers weren't something you got on the Internet. They happened when you walked up behind someone on the playground and heard them discussing how Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) were twins. (For me, true story.) One huge spoiler for the first "Star Wars" generation was the fact that Darth Vader (David Prowse, voice of James Earl Jones) was Luke's father. You have to remember that this reveal occurred many years before the prequel films gave us the story of a young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd as a child, Hayden Christensen as a young adult) and how he went from an unusually Force-sensitive child to the villain terrorizing the entire galaxy.
Back then, it was really hard to believe that this character, who was described as "more machine than man," could ever have fathered children. I remember leaving the theater in my footie pajamas, listening to the adults say this was unbelievable, and they absolutely couldn't wrap their heads around it. As it turns out, James Earl Jones couldn't believe it either. According to a 2016 interview clip from Binary Residue (via The Hollywood Reporter), he thought Darth Vader was lying about being Luke's daddy.
'He's lying'
As you probably know, David Prowse did the physical work for Darth Vader, while James Earl Jones gave us his signature voice. Jones had spoken to George Lucas about expanding the character vocally for the second film in a 2009 interview with American Film Institute (via THR) where he said:
"I remember on ['Empire'], when George had a chance to counsel me, he said, 'We don't know what we did right [on "A New Hope"], so let's just try what we did.' Naturally, I wanted to make Darth Vader more interesting, more subtle, more psychologically oriented. And he said, 'No. no. What we're finding out is you've got to keep his voice on a very narrow ban of inflection because he ain't human, really.' So, that was the answer."
Of course, the character was expanded, and he was most certainly human. He was given a son and a daughter, which Jones couldn't believe. He said in the previously mentioned 2017 Binary Residue video, "When I first saw the dialogue that said, 'Luke, I am your father,' I said to myself, 'He's lying. I wonder how they are going to play that lie out?'"
I have to admit that I, as a tiny person, didn't really believe it either. To be fair, I was also young enough to think Darth Vader was a droid. Still, it seemed preposterous at the time. In fact, Mark Hamill was one of only three people who knew before filming, along with Lucas and director Irvin Kershner. It was a huge moment in film history, despite the fact that most people in the world know it now.
Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, will be back in the form of Hayden Christensen in "Ahsoka," which is currently streaming on Disney+.