It doesn’t matter how many sequels, reboots, or spin-offs Star Wars gets, fans will always look back at what George Lucas made in 1977. A New Hope, a.k.a. 1977’s feature film, Star Wars, was a great fantasy movie that made audiences fall in love with characters from across galaxies. They could be otherworldly creatures or androids, and still, fans repeated their lines and followed them throughout the entire franchise. One of these characters is the clumsy protocol droid C-3PO, a beloved robot played by Anthony Daniels. It’s hard to imagine Star Wars without “Threepio,” but as it turns out, if it hadn’t been for Daniels’ perseverance and high pain threshold, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet the iconic android who knows six million forms of communication.
Daniels, who also gives voice to “Threepio” in all of his appearances, has been playing the character for 48 years. Almost five decades must provide you with tons of anecdotes, and the actor shared a few when he showed up at the FanX Salt Lake Pop Culture & Comic Convention. Per the report by PopVerse, Daniels spoke to fans during the convention, and he was pretty honest about wanting to quit the very first day of shooting. Wearing the suit was hard, but wearing the suit in the scorching heat of the Tunisian desert was a nightmare and, at some point, he thought that the pain was simply not worth it:
“At one point, I began to lose the nerves in this arm because they were getting squished by that. On the first day, I wore that costume all day. It took two hours to put on. They weren’t about to take it off at lunchtime, and I stood in the desert, by myself, whilst the crew went over there to have lunch, and drink things, and go to the bathroom, and I stood there looking at the desert, thinking, ‘This is the first day. Can I resign? Is there a local cab firm?’ We were in the middle of the desert. There was no escape for the droid this time.
“I put up with it. The second day I said, ‘You have to take it off at lunchtime, I’m exhausted. I can’t stretch my legs. I’ve got to sit down. I’ve got to eat, and I’ve got to do the other thing.’ And you did not want to see my body when I took that costume off. At the end of the day, I was covered in bruises and scars and whatever.”
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Fortunately, Daniels stayed, and cinema history was made. C-3PO is one of the few characters to have been featured in all nine films of the Skywalker Saga, and he cameos in Rogue One as well. Daniels also provides the voice of the android in the animated film, The Clone Wars. His legacy is unquestionable, and it wouldn’t have been the same without Daniels’ portrayal of a paranoid android. Nevertheless, casting him was not an easy task.
C-3PO Without Daniels Is Not C-3PO
As Lucas sought the proper actors who could fulfill his vision, he came upon Daniels in London. Daniels worked in the theater, and when Lucas saw him, he knew he had found his C-3PO (at least, the one who would wear the suit, as Daniels had to convince Lucas afterwards to let him use his own voice and dismiss his idea of a New York accent). However, Daniels wasn’t interested: “I wasn’t in the least interested in meeting George Lucas for the role of a robot in a low-budget science fiction film. Really, how bad could it get? My agent made me go.”
Eventually, Daniels understood that he could play the robot. He could incorporate his mime skills into the part, and as he said at the convention, seeing the concept art for the suit convinced him to play C-3PO:
“I liked George, and it was Ralph McQuarrie’s [concept artist for Star Wars] painting, as I describe in the book I wrote, which changed my mind. Then they gave me the script. Every time I turned the page, I liked him more and more, because he was so different from Luke [Skywalker], who was an incredibly sort of straight character.”
Source: PopVerse