Star Wars Episode II Filmed A Last Minute Beru Scene Only To Scrap It In The End
"Star Wars" has some great female characters that have made the franchise the cultural phenomenon that it is today. Characters like Leia Organa, the badass that ended the reign of Jabba the Hutt and stood up to Darth Vader like he was just a darkly-clad bully, or Padmé, who helped start the Rebel Alliance and saved Grogu from death. Sure, they may not get flashy medals at a ceremony or a battle against a Sith, but these characters are as essential to the fabric of the galaxy far, far away as any Jedi.
Still, the franchise has an unfortunate track record of forgetting about its female characters — for example, deleting the scene where Padmé starts the Rebellion. Such is the case with the all-time second female character we ever see in the franchise, Aunt Beru, a character who shows up for just a few minutes before dying in the original "Star Wars" movie. Even when George Lucas brought Beru and Uncle Owen back in "Attack of the Clones," they didn't have much to do. But we almost got an extra Beru scene, until it was ultimately scrapped.
Speaking with Comicbook.com, Bonnie Piesse talked about stepping into the shoes of Beru Lars and having the first scene she shot get cut. "It was a big dialogue scene with Natalie Portman on Tatooine, in the Lars homestead kitchen," she said. "They actually threw that at me ... I think it was the night before, and suddenly there's a script. It's like, 'Oh, my gosh.' And I'm Australian, so I had to wrangle the American accent for that. In the end, I never got to see that scene, so I hope that I get to see that one day. It was really fun."
Aunt Beru's big scene got deleted
The "Star Wars" prequels did a lot of things right that they don't get enough credit for, like the bold twist of portraying the Jedi as a corrupt organization unworthy of worship. But the trilogy is also rightfully maligned — for example, it insists on answering unnecessary questions that undermine what came before. In the case of Beru and Owen Lars, the prequels ultimately hurt their characters by having them just show up out of nowhere, meet Anakin for five minutes and somehow end up taking care of Luke despite having no relation to him or his father whatsoever.
At least Owen has dialogue. Beru has literally only one line of dialogue in the entire trilogy — "hello." But that wasn't always the case. It's not completely certain whether this is the scene Bonnie Piesse was referring to, but in early drafts of "Attack of the Clones" there was a brief scene between Beru and Padmé. The two were in the kitchen as Padmé made food for Anakin and the two talked about Naboo and its vastly different climate compared to the rough desert of Tatooine. (Rest assured, there was no talk of sand.)
Sadly, the scene did not make it to the final film. Still, Piesse finally had her big Beru moment in the Disney+ show "Obi-Wan Kenobi" when Beru (and Owen) fought against Reva as she tried to take Luke away.