Mark Hamill Created His Own Backstory for Luke Skywalker and It’s Absolutely Heartbreaking
Sometimes, actors need a little bit of help getting into the mindset of the characters that they play. Even the greatest and most skilled performer sometimes needs to develop a backstory for their character in order to enrich the emotions they convey in a particular scene. The Jedi master himself, Mark Hamill is no exception to this fact.
First off, let us just say that this is, in no way, an actual storyline that appears in the new Star Wars: The Last Jedi film, however, in a recent interview, Hamill revealed that he has created a rather tragic backstory for his character Luke Skywalker. Hamill starts by saying:
“Actors like backstories. They want to know motivation and all those things, and it’s such a blank slate. You know, if you look at it intellectually, I realized that it’s not my story anymore and so what [Luke] did or did not do in the intervening years aren’t really important to the audience at this point, but I have to work it out for myself.”
He continues by saying that he wrote lots of different versions of this story and had lots of different thoughts about what Luke Skywalker would have been doing with his life, who he might be with and more. He says that, eventually, he decided Luke fell in love with a woman who was a widow and she had a young child but things took a dark turn. He said:
“He [Luke Skywalker] left the Jedi to raise this young child and marry this woman. And the child got hold of a lightsaber and accidentally killed himself.”
It’s a heartbreaking scenario to imagine but, if you think about it, it certainly would explain Luke’s need for isolation. He can’t deal with the guilt of causing this young child’s death. It would also explain his hesitance to using his lightsaber again. Hamill’s fan fiction actually would make sense within the storyline. Hamill continued to explain:
“It’s nothing to do with the story, but when I think about gun violence and you read these tragic stories of kids getting hold of their parents’ guns and killing a sibling or themselves, I mean, I had to go to really dark places to get where Luke needed to be for this story.”
Does this make anyone else a little nervous for our beloved Luke Skywalker? Fans will get the chance to finally see what this dark and depressed place is all about when Star Wars: The Last Jedi premieres in theaters on December 15, 2017.
What do you think of Mark Hamill’s process to get into the mindset of a downtrodden Luke Skywalker? What do you think of the backstory he developed? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!
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A karaoke obsessed, craft beer enthusiast and lover of all things pop culture, Denise enjoys all facets of entertainment from Broadway to box office blockbusters. In her spare time, she enjoys photography, concerts (lots and lots of concerts), volunteering, reading and playing with her rescue kitten, Samantha (who rescued who, right?).
