Mark Hamill: Revelations of the Jedi

Ahead of the release of Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi this week, Mark Hamill spoke exclusively with The Big Issue, in a candid and revealing interview.

He talked about how he had to hide an injury that he sustained during filming, and that after Harrison Ford had broken a leg on The Force Awakens, filmmakers were eager to prevent the news spreading.

Undertaking a hardcore keep-fit regime for The Last Jedi, Hamill had a run-in with his running machine. Unbelievably, the accident was caused by him laughing so much while watching a DVD of Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson’s cult comedy Bottom.

• Our week with Mark Hamill: “At first, I wondered if Star Wars was a comedy” – Read the full interview here

Hamill said: “The physical humour is just sublime. I was on the treadmill watching Bottom and there was a sight gag that was so perfect, so funny, that I couldn’t believe I had seen it. I didn’t stop the treadmill. I left it running, tried to jump off to rewind the DVD and next thing I knew I was on the floor.

“They don’t want to talk about it because it is the same thing that happened to Harrison. But I twisted my ankle.”

Another revelation in this weeks Big Issue is the fact that Luke Skywalker’s role in The Force Awakens was originally meant to have much bigger, instead of only a hooded cameo.

The lost scene in the original draft of the script involved Skywalker and Daisy Ridley’s character Rey searching for the wreck of the Death Star under the sea.

Hamill said: “In that version, the Death Star had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, and there were clues we needed. I was with Daisy Ridley’s character in scuba gear in the wreck. It was just awesome. I had my hopes falsely raised!

“I didn’t know they would reconfigure it to do it the way they did it, and no one really told me until I read the script.”