Shirley Henderson Landed Her Star Wars Role In One Of The Franchise's Most Unusual Auditions

One may not notice this from watching the movie, but Shirley Henderson voices Babu Frik in J.J. Abrams' 2019 film "Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker." Babu Frik, as most "Star Wars" fans would be able to tell you, is an Anzellan engineer who stands roughly nine inches tall. In "The Rise of Skywalker," the character meddles with the brain of the protocol droid C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) to assist the movie's protagonists. Babu Frik doesn't play a huge part in the film's story, but he is one of its most memorable additions.

Henderson is a veteran of the stage and screen, having begun her professional acting career in the mid-1980s. Throughout the 1990s, she appeared on several notable British TV shows and gained international attention thanks to her roles in films like "Rob Roy" and "Trainspotting." Henderson also gives an excellent performance in Mike Leigh's 1999 Gilbert-and-Sullivan musical biopic "Topsy-Turvy," playing real-life actor Leonora Braham. In 2002, she became recognized for portraying the ghost Moaning Myrtle in the "Harry Potter" movies. She's also worked with Michael Winterbottom, Sofia Coppola, Oliver Parker, Todd Solondz, and Kelly Reichardt. More recently, she played the voice of OOOOO in Pixar's "Elio" and has been part of the regular cast of two TV shows: the drama "Summerwater" and the Netflix crime procedural "Dept. Q." 

Although she was already familiar with voice work, Henderson's audition to play Babu Frik was unlike anything she had done before. Because of the amount of corporate secrecy surrounding "Star Wars" projects, Henderson didn't even really know what she was auditioning for. She was given only a few vague character traits before being asked to perform for the "Rise of Skywalker" casting directors, which she did ... on the floor, as she recounted to Radio Times Magazine.

Henderson noted that when it comes to "Star Wars" projects, actors are asked if they want to audition and nothing else. They are given no other details, including the name of their potential character or the part that character plays in the story. This is frustratingly vague, of course. Henderson recalled demanding, "You have to give me something so I can prepare." Eventually, the film's creatives came back with just the descriptor of her character as being "Maybe very small, maybe very old, maybe from somewhere else."

She then proceeded to audition with that vague information. As she remembered it:

"I went to the audition with J.J. Abrams, who is the sweetest man, and Nina Gold (who cast me in 'Topsy-Turvy'), had a lovely chat, and then I did my bit. I hunched down on the floor and did this voice I had come up with in a language I had made up. He said, 'You've got the job,' and they brought in a model of Babu Frik. It's voice acting, but not in the sense that you voice it later. I was there, on set, crammed into a cupboard on the floor trying to see what the puppeteers were doing with Babu's mouth to improvise in the made-up language. An amazing job."

It sounds fun, of course, and Henderson's unique voice was not recognizable in the role. In many cases of puppetry, the voice actor will operate the puppet's mouth, so it's somewhat unusual that Henderson had to relegate puppeteering duties to the professional puppeteers. Regardless, Babu Frik became kind of a standout character despite appearing in a film that many "Star Wars" fans feel ambivalent about. Regardless, "The Rise of Skywalker" made over one billion dollars.