Real Snakes Terrorized Frank Oz & Mark Hamill During Star Wars' Dagobah Scenes
When people talk about "Star Wars," they often bring up creator George Lucas or one of its stars (like Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford), but perhaps the greatest unsung hero of the franchise is Frank Oz. Oz is a puppeteer best known for his work on "Sesame Street" and "The Muppets," but in "Star Wars," he puppeteered and provided the voice of the sage Jedi, Yoda. Making Yoda come to life meant hiding beneath the sets so he could move the puppets' limbs, his work hidden offscreen while his performance appeared through Yoda's face and body. It's pretty thankless work that wasn't even considered acting when Lucas campaigned to get Oz nominated for an Oscar, and that didn't even account for some of the physical misery Oz had to endure in order to do his job — specifically, dealing with snakes.
In a 2018 interview on The Star Wars Show, Oz revealed that one of the most difficult parts of working on "The Empire Strikes Back" was working inside Yoda's hut, where he had some very scaly co-stars slithering about. While having snakes on set can be a little scary in the best of situations, having them in the close quarters of Yoda's little hut sounds positively petrifying.
Why did it have to be snakes?
In the interview, host Anthony Carboni asked Oz about filming the Dagobah scenes, and the performer discussed the biggest, most cold-blooded of obstacles:
"There's always obstacles. That just comes with the territory. So you're always uncomfortable, you're always in pain. You just accept that, and you work with it. I guess the only obstacle for Mark and me, which was a man-made obstacle, was Kersh [director Irvin Kershner]. And I guess some people know it but not everybody. In Yoda's hut, Kersh decided to put snakes in the back. There's this frickin' anaconda and we're trying to work, you know, and this snake's behind us, about two or three snakes, and so that was kind of freaky."
Viewers looking for the snakes can find them in an early scene where Luke (Hamill) and Yoda are chilling in Yoda's hut. Luke even has to pick up a little snake and move it off of the table in Yoda's kitchen, and you can see a rather large snake curled up in the background. Oz joked that Kershner told him that everything was "gonna be fine," but noted that Kershner didn't join them in the tiny hut set. The snakes are one of those little details that make "Empire" so great, and it's really a shame that it was both Kershner's first and final "Star Wars" film.
The importance of getting Yoda just right
The snakes might seem like a weird, meaningless detail, but they helped shape both Yoda as a character and the planet of Dagobah, making it feel more alive and less like a set built in a studio warehouse. The creation and design of Yoda were meticulous because his introduction was a make-or-break moment for the "Star Wars" franchise. Other than Chewbacca, there weren't any creature protagonists in the first "Star Wars" film, so Yoda needed to feel real. The Yoda puppet itself was created by special effects makeup artist Stuart Freeborn, who designed the creature based on his own appearance. The original design for the Yoda puppet was a little bit terrifying, but after some serious refinement, he became the little green guy we now know and love.
Without Oz's incredible performance and Hamill's excellent reactions, Yoda might not have worked. The pair deserve a lot of credit, not only for doing great work onscreen but for being around a bunch of snakes in a teeny tiny hut. It could have always been worse, though. At least no one got bitten, which couldn't be said for the folks working on their co-star Harrison Ford's "Raiders of the Lost Ark," where it seems no one was safe from the many snakes on-set. No, thank you!