Ian McDiarmid Talks Palpatine’s RISE OF SKYWALKER Return, Fan Backlash, and a Scrapped Star Wars TV Series
When Emperor Palpatine returned in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, it sparked a firestorm among fans, and Ian McDiarmid, the man behind the galaxy’s ultimate villain for over 40 years, is well aware of it.
Recently, McDiarmid opened up about the reaction to Palpatine’s resurrection, the strange logic behind it, and even touched on a scrapped TV series that could have explored the character’s past.
Speaking with Variety, McDiarmid said it was "very satisfying" to find out that Palpatine had a granddaughter, Daisy Ridley’s Rey, even though, like most of us, he wasn’t exactly sure how that was supposed to make sense.
"There was never any discussion of any of that. It was up to me to work it out in my head," McDiarmid recalled. "There was talk in The Phantom Menace about something called midichlorians, which were involved somehow in Anakin’s birth.
“George didn’t want to go too deeply into that. But we reckoned it was kind of virgin birth, though one ought not to say that because God knows you get all sorts of complications."
And when it came to how Palpatine could have children at all, McDiarmid didn’t exactly sugarcoat the awkwardness of the question:
"Then people ask the slightly embarrassing question about, 'Does this evil monster ever have sex?' And we don’t really know the answer to that question either — things in tubes, you think about probably, rather than the awful vision that you might have in your head of this monster ever having a sexual relationship with anybody."
The Rise of Skywalker faced its fair share of backlash, especially around how Palpatine’s return was handled. But McDiarmid seems pretty unbothered by it.
"Well, there’s always something, isn’t there? I don’t read that stuff and I’m not online," he said. "So it’ll only reach me if someone mentions it. I thought there might be a bit of a fuss about bringing him back. But as I said, mine and Palpatine’s logic was entirely reasonable."
"This man who was horribly maimed thought maybe one day it might happen to him, and we’ve got to have a plan B. I loved the whole idea that he should come back and be even more powerful than he was before," McDiarmid continued. "Though this time, he had to be utterly destroyed. So I think he’s dead."
Interestingly, The Rise of Skywalker wasn't the only time Palpatine’s past almost got a closer look. McDiarmid also touched on the long-rumored, unproduced Star Wars TV project that George Lucas had been developing before selling Lucasfilm to Disney.
When asked if anything from the series, rumored to focus more on the Sith, was ever shared with him, McDiarmid replied, "Just the story of Darth Plagueis the Wise. It’s fairly obvious that my character murdered Plagueis on his road to becoming Palpatine. But beyond that, no."
"With George, you didn’t discuss anything really. You turn up and you shoot. These films take a long time to make and the pressure is intense for many reasons; of course, George was at the forefront of all of that.
“So he had all of that to think about day by day. He takes a good deal of trouble over casting; but, once he’s cast, then he likes the actors to get on with it," McDiarmid added.
While Palpatine's dark influence still pops up now and then across Star Wars lore, don't expect to see him in Andor Season 2. Tony Gilroy confirmed the character won't appear.
And with The Acolyte now cancelled, any plans to dig deeper into Sith legends like Darth Plagueis seem to have been quietly buried for now.