Samuel L. Jackson Says He And Mark Hamill Still Haven’t Gotten The Star Wars Call From J.J. Abrams
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All right, everyone, you can put aside your ever-growing list of actors rumored to be involved with J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode VII. Instead, you can grab your Bingo cards for former Star Wars actors who may or may not be returning to the franchise. This time, our update comes from Mace Windu himself, Samuel L. Jackson, who recently appeared in an episode of Late Night With David Letterman and shared a few tidbits about who hasn’t gotten the call to arms yet: namely, all the best Jedi.
When Letterman asked the inevitable question about Jackson’s involvement in the Star Wars universe, Jackson drew laughs with the disappointing news that neither he nor Mark Hamill have been contacted by Abrams or Disney about reprising their roles. He’s been filming a movie with Hamill in London, and Jackson said, “I asked Mark if he’d heard from J.J. Abrams and he said, ‘No,’ and then all of a sudden Ewan [McGregor] was there and I spoke to him on the phone, asked him if he was there doing Star Wars. He said, ‘No, they haven’t called me…'” It’s still early going, sure, and they’re still auditioning for new roles, but you’d think the studios would want to lock down the more popular and consistently busy actors before their upcoming schedules get completely filled out.
Jackson then joked about the three of them getting together to stand around London “and see if maybe they could use some old Jedi,” and then said they should “just go through the auditions and see if we can get a job.” Now all I want is to see Funny or Die get the three of these guys to film some fake Star Wars audition videos.
He also mentions making it clear to Abrams at George Lucas’ wedding that he was interested in appearing in the film, but Abrams “was kinda like, ‘Mmm,'” and that was also Jackson got out of him. Even if all three of those actors were in the film in some capacity other than their original roles, I’d still be invested. Make them part of a cantina barbershop quartet. Check out the full interview clip below:
This all goes against everything George Lucas has been saying for ages now about how Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher have been signed on since before the Lucasfilm buyout. But then Lucas probably also said that the second trilogy was worth people’s time, too.
So far, the only confirmed cast member has been everyone’s favorite beep-squeaking droid, R2-D2, as seen in the image below.
