'Star Wars' Trivia: Mark Hamill Went Full Motion-Capture For A Small Additional Role In 'The Last Jedi'
The true, lasting legacy of Star Wars: The Last Jedi won't be clear until after the dust settles on J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Will Rian Johnson's 2017 entry be considered a pivotal turning point in the Star Wars mythos, or a creatively risky anomaly whose narrative decisions are largely ret-conned? While we wait to find out, The Last Jedi continues to incite a whirlwind of controversy, fascination, praise, and today, a fun bit of trivia.
You may have known that Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill played an additional role in The Last Jedi. But the extent of that performance was more detailed than many previously thought.
In The Last Jedi, Hamill not only turned in a soulful, complex performance as a disillusioned Luke Skywalker, but the actor also played a small character called Dobbu Scay, a tiny alien gambler who could be seen trying to drunkenly insert coins into BB-8 during the film's trip to Canto Bight. Dobbu Scay (whose name is an anagram of The Last Jedi editor Bob Duscay) speaks primarily in grunts, and when we learned that it was Hamill's voice providing those grunts, it made sense: Hamill, of course, is a legendary voiceover performer whose work includes voicing The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series and Chucky in this year's Child's Play, among many others.
But it turns out Hamill did more than just spend a few minutes in a recording booth to help bring Dobbu Scay to life.
It is commonly (& mistakenly) reported that I only did the voice of Dobbu Scay, but I filmed the scene in a full motion-capture suit w/ a giant-sized medicine ball to make me the same size as BB-8. I didn't expect to be credited, assuming it would be another unbilled easter-egg. https://t.co/f6hAPOstxR
— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) June 29, 2019
In an old interview with CinemaBlend, Hamill explained that he lobbied for the part so he could get some motion capture experience:
"I just said, 'I'd love to do a motion capture role of some sort.' And so one Saturday afternoon down I went... now people said, 'Oh, it was voiced by Mark Hamill.' No! I was in a motion capture suit, and they had a BB-8 that was proportionally right for how small the character was. It was big! So I had a blast. I really loved doing that."
This actually marks at least the third character Hamill has played in the Star Wars galaxy – he'd previously voiced Darth Bane in Star Wars: The Clone Saga. And the actor has also hinted that he had uncredited lines in The Force Awakens that he wasn't compensated for, just for the fun of it all. So it seems that when we're looking at the totality of Star Wars roles for Hamill, there is another – we just need a devoted fan to solve the mystery.