Mark Hamill Shares Thoughts on Holding His Original Lightsaber From RETURN OF THE JEDI After All These Years
Last week we debuted a clip from Mark Hamill's Comic-Con HQ series Pop Culture Quest. In the clip, Hamill was reunited with his original prop lightsaber from the Star Wars film Return of the Jedi. It was pretty cool to see the actor hold the lightsaber for the first time in decades.
During a recent interview with ScreenRant, Hamill was asked how he felt about holding the hilt of the lightsaber after all these years, and this was his reply:
"I didn't know that was going to happen. People sometimes assume that we get to keep our props which, of course, we don't. I didn't know that they were going to have that on set. That's the fun thing about a show like this; it's unpredictable, and you can never be sure exactly what's going to happen. And it has some emotional resonance for me, because I'm not overly sentimental, but it really brings back memories. When I think of those movies, I mostly think of the cast and the crew, you know. The guy who was my dresser, or the prop guy, or even the tea lady. The studio stuff was done in England; of course we went on location to various countries, but I see these photographs and these memories of the people that most people don't know, and they were the family that you lived with when you were making these films. Some of them I've worked with again, and some I haven't seen since we did the original films, but it's a sense memory thing. You hold something like that in your hands and you think, 'Oh gosh, I remember when John Mollo was here." Like I say, it brings back some really great memories."
The report goes on to say that Hamill's not an overly sentimental person. It's interesting to hear about how important the people he worked with were to him and how when he sees things like this lightsaber he immediately remembers the costume designer of the film. That definitely gives us some insight into the kind of person that Hamill is, and he comes off as being very thoughtful.