“Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” will be released on DVD November 1st and last week our colleagues from Coming Soon had the chance to attend a press meeting at the “DVD Junket” and witness a discussion with Hayden Christensen, who portrays Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3.
Read on for a clip from the interview:
Q: How difficult was it to hold back everything that you knew was going to happen in Episode III while you were filming Episode II.
Christensen: It was challenging-honestly, it was, because you are cast as this character that is the connective tissue to someone that represents all that is evil. So, your natural instinct is to try to take him there. George [Lucas] was constantly asking me to pull back from that and to make him someone who is struggling and someone who allows his frustrations to present themselves in ways that aren’t necessarily perceived as evil, but maybe in other ways. And to keep it at that and to not really show any sort of a character arc in Episode II. The character was more about who he was at that time of his life and Episode III was about changing him and making him evolve to Darth [Vader]-which was why I was very excited to get to Episode III to finally get to do that, which was something that I had sort of built up in my head for so long.
Q: Having built it up in your head for so long, how did it feel when you did get to those last scenes? How did you approach doing that?
Christensen: With great joy and glee. It came very easily because I just thought about it so much already. It was just an eventuality for me, you know? It was orgasmic (laughing). I don’t know. It was amazing. I was waiting and waiting and waiting and finally I got to take him to the dark side.
Q: How did you convince George Lucas to act inside the Darth Vader suit?
Christensen: I just very politely asked if it was possible. And George and Rick - and the kind of people that they are - allowed me that privilege. I just said, “Listen, I’ve read the script. Now I know he’s going to make an appearance at the end.” And I think they were already in the process of meeting with basketball players and really tall people to do that job. And I just said, “I don’t know if you guys can even make this happen but it would be really great for me if I could actually put the suit on.”