Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis (31 page)

Another scene that caused much debate is when Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) tells Anakin that he’s a “special child.” Anakin has been having a fight with another Rodian, the same species as my rubber-headed character, and I had been in the background, egging Anakin on. Qui-Gon stops the fight.

Always looking for an opportunity, I asked George if I could have a line.

“Yes,” George said, “why not?” I spotted that glint in his eye. “Let’s give the fans something to talk about.”

Now,
Star Wars
aficionados will remember Greedo from the “original” 1977 film – he was the green alien shot dead by Han Solo in the cantina on Tatooine.

George decided to make the character whom Anakin was fighting into the young Greedo. George said to me, “After the fight’s done, say to Greedo, ‘Keep that sort of thing up and you’ll come to a bad end.’”

“Cool!”

“We won’t use it,” George said, taking the wind out of my sails somewhat, “but we’ll put it on the DVD extras and it’ll be debated at conventions.” Which it was.

To deliver my lines, I had to learn Huttese, the official language of the Rodians, created by Oscar-winning sound designer (and the voice of Wall-e) Ben Burt. I even got my own training tape, just as you would use to learn any other language, and I can still recall some to this day.

I’m sure you can imagine my joy when I was told we were moving from our palatial residence to film in a more “remote” area. I fretted. My supply of chocolate digestives was running dangerously low. However, I was relieved to see that George was staying at the same hotel as the rest of us; this was generally a sign that the hotel would be pretty good.

And it was true – the hotel was the best in town.

It was also the only hotel in town.

There were no windows in the thick stone walls, just a collection of holes. The bed was lumpier than the Leprechaun’s skin and dozens of insects bustled their way across the floor and chattered through the night. I slept with one eye open, watching the digestives.

I couldn’t understand why we’d moved from one patch of sand to another but then I realized that George wanted to use the amazing houses the locals lived in as a location. They looked a bit like white, smooth honeycombs and the people who lived there were very welcoming and put up with an awful lot as we turned their village into a film set for a few days.

The only tricky part came was when the call to prayer came at midday. Men spent the rest of the day taking it in turns to climb to the top of little towers that were dotted around the town and shriek at the top of their voices for an hour or so. In the end we had no choice but to carry on filming through the cacophony – a bit of a challenge for the sound engineers.

I remember waking up on the morning we were due to leave with pure joy in my heart. I was down to my last couple of melted and crumbled digestives, so the end came just in the nick of time. I traveled with Jake Lloyd and his dad by ferry to the island of Djerba, the Blackpool of Tunisia and the location for some of the scenes from the original
Star Wars
movie (including the Mos Eisley spaceport exteriors).

Jake was as overjoyed as I was to be returning to civilization. He’d already done a fair bit of acting prior to
The Phantom Menace
so it wasn’t as if the movie biz was new to him. We didn’t really talk too much about the film during the journey. I really liked Jake, he spoke to me as if we were on the same level, as if I were just another ten-year-old. He even tried to sell me a lizard; goodness knows where he found the poor creature. We’ve since kept in touch and these days he’s much more interested in making films than appearing in them.

We had to spend one night in Djerba before flying back to the UK and while the cast and crew went wild with the food, drink, and ice after weeks of being careful, I decided to keep up my precautions until we were off the continent, and tucked into the very last of my crushed and melted McVitie’s. Everyone else came down with food poisoning. My beloved chocolate digestives had saved me.

Once all the location filming had been done, George went off to edit. After this was completed it was time to film the pickups in a second wave of filming where any missing bits were added. These scenes were filmed at Ealing Studios in the UK.

I was very surprised to be called by Robin Gurland, the casting director. I really wasn’t expecting to have to film any more of my parts. “George wants you as Yoda in a scene,” she said.

“You must be mistaken,” I said. “Yoda’s a puppet and I’m not having Frank Oz putting his hand –”

“Well, yes he is, but now George needs him to walk across the ground with the other characters near the end of the film and Frank can’t do that.”

Wow, I was going to be Yoda! Because I’m a bit larger than the actual puppet, the costume department made me my own Yoda outfit, complete with walking stick. They also gave me Frank Oz’s Yoda gloves, which had Frank’s name on the inside of the cuff.

Sam was called in at the last minute to act in the same scene, as the original little actress playing Even Piell was away on holiday. It took place at the end of the film when Anakin and Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) and members of the Jedi Council exit a space cruiser and are met by Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) and Queen Padme (Natalie Portman).

On the day, producer Rick McCallum was directing. As I was so excited to be playing Yoda I couldn’t help myself and slipped into my occasional bad habit of adding my own sound effects. I grumbled and hurrumphed in Yoda’s voice as I made my way down the gangway. Sam, unrecognizable in her prosthetics, was right beside me.

A few seconds later, I heard “Cut, cut!” Rick then said, “Warwick, I need you to hurry up a bit and keep up with everyone else.”

“But I’m Yoda,” I said. “He can’t walk fast and neither can I in this costume.”

At this point I had no idea that Yoda was going to bounce around like a nutter in all of the prequels. Added to this was the complication that I would be naturally slower as my legs were half the length of everyone else’s. I couldn’t exactly jog down a gangway in my Yoda costume.

“I’m not a sprinter!” I said as we lined up to try yet another take. I had to focus on the character’s integrity – I didn’t want to turn him into Charlie Chaplin, but at the same time I still had to keep up with everybody else. Thankfully we got it in the end. But I made the entire cast walk up and down that gangplank about half a dozen times before I did – and after all that you have to look very carefully to spot me as Yoda. I considered it a great honor to have played the Jedi Master, albeit for a tiny amount of screen time.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m a big fan of film soundtracks and have been collecting them since I was a kid. So after the filming and editing was completed I asked George if I could come to the recording of the score to
The Phantom Menace
. To my surprise and delight he said yes. It was recorded at the famed Abbey Road Studios in London; George was there on the day and I watched spellbound as John Williams and the London Philharmonic ran straight into the main theme, one of the most recognizable pieces of film music ever written. It was incredible; I could hardly believe I there with George, watching the film play out on a screen while a world-class orchestra played the music live.

I’d brought David Sibley, my dialogue coach, with whom I’d filmed in my student days, along as well. We were both in the studio when the orchestra suddenly launched into the opening
Star Wars
fanfare. If you’ve ever stood next to a full orchestra then you’ll know just how incredibly loud they can be – it’s like standing next to the
QE2
’s foghorn. Poor David was so surprised by the volume, he jumped back as if he’d been shot by a blaster, knocking into a huge speaker that toppled from its stand and crashed to the floor,
bang!
The orchestra crashed to a cacophonic halt and poor David turned bright purple as John Williams and the entire London Philharmonic turned around to glare at him.

I looked at John Williams and said in a matter-of-fact voice: “So, are those speakers expensive then?”

A couple of hours later, I was sitting with George in the recording booth when my mysterious scruffy character from the “Willow shot” appeared on screen.

“George,” I said.

“Yes, Warwick.”

“What are we going to call this guy?”

“I don’t know, what do you think he should be called?”

“Well,” I said, “in all of your films my characters’ names start with the letter
W
. There’s Willow, Wicket W. Warrick,
^d
and Wald, so I suppose it has to start with a
W
.”

“Okay, let’s call this guy Weazel.” He paused, adding, “With a ‘zee.’”

This led me nicely to a subject that I’d been meaning to ask George about for some time.

“George, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, Warwick.”

“Why do my characters’ names always start with
W
?”

I knew George’s middle name was Walton and I wondered whether it had something to do with that. Or was it just
W
for Warwick?

“I’m not telling,” he said, “my little secret.”

And that was that.