Playing A Wookiee In The Star Wars Holiday Special Was A Surprisingly Dangerous Job
"Star Wars" fans of a certain age sat through it on television. Younger fans had to hunt for it on the Internet. It was the debut of Boba Fett, and there was an excruciatingly long Wookiee domestic scene without any dialogue but plenty of grunts and groans. Yes, friends, I'm talking about the "Star Wars Holiday Special." Carrie Fisher sings while high as a kite, Mark Hamill wears an astonishing amount of makeup, and Harrison Ford is clearly unhappy to be there.
It's full of all sorts of weirdness, like Chewbacca's (Peter Mayhew) wife Malla (short for Mallatobuck, played by Mickey Morton) watching a cooking show while her hairy paws cook food without gloves (eww), and Chewie's father Itchy (short for Attichitcuk, played by Paul Gale) watches soft porn in the form of a VR recording of a singing Diahann Carroll. His kid Lumpy (Lumpawaroo, played by Patty Maloney) watches some sort of variety show acrobats ... it's a mess.
It wasn't just a disaster to watch. It was actually pretty dangerous for the actors in that Wookiee scene, according to Yahoo! Entertainment's 2018 video "The Star Wars Holiday Special at 40." Don your festive red Life Day robes and let's have a little chat about what it was like to wear those rugs.
'We're gonna be in trouble'
The director for the "Holiday Special" was Steve Binder, who also did the "Elvis Presley '68 Comeback Special." He said in the video that he did actually enjoy his time on the project, explaining, "I had a great time shooting it. I got to work with all of the cast of the original, and we had a crack A-plus television crew on the show." As true as that may be, he was concerned about the Wookiee scene before shooting ever began. Let me say again that the entire scene is done in Shyriiwook, with no subtitles. Even as a tiny kid obsessed with "Star Wars," I remember getting up to get a cookie during that scene because I had no idea what was going on. Binder said of the scene, "You know, when I saw the script and I saw the first 10 minutes or longer with the Chewbacca family and just subtitles I said, 'Uh oh. We're gonna be in trouble.'" (Again, there were no subtitles.)
I won't say it was the least of their worries, but yeah. they were definitely in trouble. Add to that the fact that those giant suits were hot and difficult to breathe in. Binder explained:
"The Chewbaccas themselves had to take oxygen every hour on the hour. I think we had to shut down every hour for at least 10 or 15 minutes so they could get oxygen. The actress who was a little person of a Chewbacca family came in weighing around sixty pounds, I think she left weighing around 40 pounds, you know, because of the costumes and the heat."
"The Chewbaccas?" I don't even know what to do with that.
It's hard out there for a Wookiee
I would try to explain the rest of the "Holiday Special" plot to you but this is a thing that must be experienced. Look, this special still haunts my nightmares, not that this has stopped me from revisiting bootleg versions on YouTube over the years. It's so terrible that it almost comes back around to being good, and there is a part of me (and likely many of you) that has a soft spot for its awfulness. That said, other than the cooking show (with Harvey Korman as host Gormaanda), I cannot help but skip the Wookiee scene.
However, hearing what these poor actors went through, I will attempt to give it a shot during my next rewatch. I cannot promise anything, but history is important. We need to look clearly at the things we love, even the ugly little horrifying corners of it that involve putting actors in costumes that require oxygen breaks every hour.
If you feel the need to pay tribute to the people who sweat profusely and had to be given help breathing for one of the most hated scenes in "Star Wars" history, I fear you won't find it on Disney+ like the rest of the catalog. But it's out there if you know where to look.