ARTOODETOO.COM attends the Star Wars Celebrity Talk Show at Disney-MGM.

June 18, 2003        by Sebulbadoug

A Theater packed with fans listens intently as the stars recall their experiences making the original trilogy.

One of the major attractions to the Star Wars Weekends was the “Stars of the Saga – Star Wars Celebrity Talk Show”, featuring the stars of the day, Jeremy Bulloch and Peter Mayhew. The show was live at the at the ABC Theater in the Disney-MGM theme park.

Peter Mayhew was the first guest on the stage that morning. After introductions, Peter was asked what he would be doing in the near future, Mayhew responded by saying, “There’s a low budget movie being made by an independent guy. He’s asked me to go out to Australia. I’ve got the intention of going out there. I don’t know when, and I don’t know what I’m going to be doing.” The host responded by saying, “We know that you’ll be playing Chewbacca in Episode Three.”, whereupon the audience went wild with applause, cheers and whistles.

Asked how he got his start in the movie industry, Peter said that his career was launched by Jane Seymour, who was staring in “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” in 1977. At the time, 7-foot-3-inch Mayhew worked as an attendant in a London hospital. The film’s producer saw a photo of Mayhew in a newspaper article about men with big feet, and wanted him to play a Minoton which was an 8 ½’ tall creature. Because Peter is so tall, he was chosen for the part, though he was not credited in the movie.

Peter also said that when he was offered the part as Chewbacca, he went out to zoo’s and other places to do research about how his character should act. Asked if it was true that George Lucas modeled Chewbacca after his dog, “Indiana” Mayhew replied, “Yes.”, Knowing that Lucas’ dog was named Indiana gives new meaning and insight to Sean Connery’s line in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. When Connery’s character hears that his son’s nickname is “Indiana”. He says, “You name a dog Indiana!”

When asked how he vocalized his part through the Chewbacca costume, Mayhew said that what he said in a scene really didn’t make much difference. “When we were on set, it was fairly noisy. And the costume is a full face mask that muffled everything.” Consequently, Peter could say just about anything he wanted, because no one could understand him anyway. What he said would change, depending on where they were and the time of day. “You’d come back after lunch, and you’ve had a liquid lunch, and the lines would be completely different. You know, it’s just one of those things.” he said.

Asked if he could tell what the story was as they made the first movie, Peter replied, “No. You were given certain scenes each day and they weren’t in order, so they didn’t make any sense. Usually in a page of script, there will be the main action, then there will blue screen stuff that would be put in afterwards. So you never knew exactly how the scene was supposed to look or what it meant.”

Peter was asked what he thought when filming was over for the original movie. Peter responded, “Well, we didn’t know what to think. But when you look at it, Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing do not give their names to something that isn’t any good. So we knew it would be good. We didn’t know it could be big. I never thought it would be the blockbuster that it became. Not even George imagined this would happen.”

Peter was asked what the conditions were like in “Empire Strikes Back”, when they filmed the Hoth scenes in Norway. “Well”, said Peter, that suit is extremely warm. I was the warmest one on the set.” Temperatures would get down to and hover around 20 below zero, and they had to contend with ‘white outs”, where the wind would drive the snow so fiercely that you couldn’t see a foot in front of you. The weather was so bad in fact, that the Tauntaun scene was shot in the parking lot of the hotel they were in, about fifty feet from the main entrance. That’s the scene where Han Solo stuffs a nearly frozen Luke Skywalker into a freshly gutted Tauntaun.

Asked if the diesel smell ever got out of the costume after the Death Star Disposal scene, Peter said, “I never got wet. Harrison, Carey and Mark really got wet, but I never did.” He said that if you watch the scene, you’ll notice he is either at the door, or along the back wall. That’s because there was a 4 inch ledge at the bottom of the wall just above the water line. Peter stayed on that ledge throughout the whole scene.

Jeremy Bulloch then joined the show to loud applause from the audience. When Introduced, Jeremy Bulloch was asked if he had ridden the “Rockin Rollercoaster” at the park yet. Jeremy replied, “No, I’m sorry, I haven’t. I’m frightened of those things. I mean it’s all right when you wear this costume (Boba Fett), you feel brave, but I’m a bit of a wimp.”

Jeremy said that he imagined the character of Boba Fett as one that could easily come from a “spaghetti western”. “I think Boba Fett is Clint Eastwood in “Fistful of Dollars.”, he said. “I remember seeing that and thinking, that’s how Boba Fett is. He’s a bounty hunter as well.” So he used Eastwood’s character as a model for how Fett moved, “although the cigarette under the helmet was a bit unhealthy.” He continued, “Everything was very slow in movement, and then suddenly, like a snake! And then its all over, and back to lighting the cigarette and we’ll see what happens next. That’s how I saw him.”

Jeremy was well established in films before Empire Strikes Back came calling. In fact, he got his first acting job when he was twelve years old, in a “Shreddies” commercial, a brand of corn flake cereal in England. Bulloch says that job was the most difficult he’s ever had. He was supposed to manipulate a little toy that came in the cereal, but kept missing the mark, frustrating the director to no end.

He also had parts in three “James Bond” films: “Octopussy”, “For Your Eyes Only” and “Spy Who Loved Me.”, and he was in an English soap opera in the sixties, and he played the lead role of Robin Hood in “Robin of Sherwood” in the seventies.

Asked if he was intimidated when asked to do the part of Boba Fett in Empire Strikes Back, Jeremy replied, “I certainly wasn’t intimidated because I had been an actor, but there have been a lot of sequels that don’t measure up to the original film, so that was a question. I hoped that it wouldn’t be awful.”

When asked about the carbon freezing scene, he said that it was hotter than the desert scene. The set for the freezing chamber so hot that he and David Prowse (Darth Vader) would have to remove their helmets after every take and they would be dripping wet with sweat. The costumes didn’t have fans or any cooling, like today’s costumes do.

Bulloch also played Lieutenant Sheckel. Jeremy says he was used in the scene, “Mainly because there was no other actor around to do the part.” Bulloch was on set, waiting to do another scene as Boba Fett when they came and asked him to put on an Imperial officer’s uniform and do the part. Sheckel was the officer that escorted Princess Leia on Cloud City.

Both are avid collectors, having rooms full of their respective characters. Jeremy even showed up wearing a Boba Fett watch, one of his favorite collection objects.