New 'Star Wars' Documentary Clip Will Make You Feel for Darth Vader
The upcoming Elstree 1976, a documentary about the supporting actors and extras who appeared in the original Star Wars, is filled with anecdotes about how the first Jedi blockbuster changed their lives.
One of the stories in the movie, told by David Prowse, aka Darth Vader, may even make you feel some sympathy for the Sith lord. (Watch the clip above.) As Prowse explains, he was concerned during production about whether the audience would be able to understand what Darth Vader was saying.
Related: ‘Elstree 1976’ Trailer: Meet 10 Who Were There When 'Star Wars’ Was Born
“I used to say to George [Lucas], ‘What are we going to do about the dialogue, because everything I’m doing is coming through the mask and it’s no good for reproduction purposes,’” Prowse recalls. “And he’d say, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll go into the sound studios and rerecord all your dialogue at the end of the movie.’ So I automatically assumed that it was me who was going to go into the sound studio to rerecord all my dialogue.”
Of course, as we know now, that’s not what happened. Once the shoot in London wrapped, the postproduction team got to work in America and realized it was going to be impossible for the actor to do his own ADR.
“It was much cheaper to employ any voice-over artist rather than fly me all the way over from London to Hollywood just to overdub a half a dozen lines or however much I had,” Prowse says. But if he’s bitter about his voice not being heard in the first Star Wars movie, as well as the ones that followed, he doesn’t sound like it.
“Fortunately for me, they couldn’t have picked a better actor to overdub my lines than James Earl Jones,” he says. Still, not getting to utter “I find your lack of faith disturbing” in one of the most iconic films of all time had to be, well, pretty disturbing. So, even though we never thought we’d type these words, we have to say: We feel for you, Vader.
When you’re done watching that clip, watch a recent segment below with Carrie Fisher on the Jonathan Ross Show where she reenacted a Star Wars scene with an actor who shared Prowse’s West Country — and decidedly not intimidating — accent. Elstree 1976 hits select theaters and VOD on May 6.
