Mark Hamill is getting candid about his time in the Star Wars and DC universes.
No matter how many new projects Hamill appears in each year, the actor will always be best known for two roles: Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars galaxy and the Joker across various animated Batman projects. When The Skywalker Saga concluded in 2019 with The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars fans believed that it would be the final time they saw Hamill as Luke Skywalker. However, much to their surprise, Hamill made a cameo in the Season 2 finale of The Mandalorian as a digitally de-aged Luke Skywalker, a reprisal that the actor recently revealed he did for one major reason.
Why did Mark Hamill do The Mandalorian?
In an extensive interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Hamill shared the main reason he did The Mandalorian was because he had never gotten the chance to portray the middle portion of Luke Skywalker’s life. “The reason I did Mandalorian was that Luke had a beginning and an end. There was no middle,” he explained.
“It was like making a trilogy about James Bond as a young boy who first became aware of the Secret Service and wanted to be a part of it. Part two was him training to be an agent. Part three is earning his license to kill — The End. No From Russia With Love, Dr. No or Goldfinger. You never got to see Luke as a Master Jedi at the peak of his powers,” Hamill continued. “He was the most idealistic character in that series. He was someone who would take adversity and double down and come back and counter his setbacks. We didn’t see any of that. So when I got the chance, I thought, ‘Geez, this is wonderful.’ I think Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, boy, do they get Star Wars. They get it. They’re speaking the same language that George did in a way that I questioned in the sequels.”
Hamill also recalled his initial concern about auditioning for the role of the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, largely due to how the fandom reacted to Tim Burton’s casting of Michael Keaton as the Dark Knight for his feature-length adaptation.
“It was right after they announced that Michael Keaton was cast as Batman, and the fan community freaked out, ‘Oh, he’s Mr. Mom. He’s a comic actor.’ So even though I really wanted the part, I thought, ‘If they freaked out about Mr. Mom being Batman, how are they going to feel about Luke Skywalker being the Joker? There’s no way I’m going to get this!’ And because I believed that, I was completely calm and relaxed,” Hamill recalled. “I just let it rip. I drove out of the parking lot really cocky: ‘Top that, try to find a better Joker than that.’ People didn’t even believe it was me. They thought it was treated or sped up or who knows what. But it was a fundamental reason I got so many interesting roles in voiceover.”
The entire Star Wars franchise is available to stream on Disney+, while Batman: The Animated Series can currently be found on HBO Max.