With the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker only weeks away, it would make sense that Mark Hamill might be feeling a little nostalgic.
In a video with Omaze, Hamill recently sat down to watch his screen test audition for Star Wars: A New Hope and his reaction to it is amazing.
As the video begins Hamill makes fun of his haircut all those years ago saying that was the most he contributed to Luke’s look, his “Beatles-esque haircut”.
Harrison Ford also appeared in the screen-test footage and Hamill didn’t hold back his praise for his co-star.
“This was the first day I ever met Harrison Ford, by the way. He’s always been one of my favorite people. I’m so lucky to have been able to work with him because he was the personification of cool. I mean, he was Han Solo. He’s better in the screen test than I am, and he’s off-camera, so that should give you some idea,” he joked.
At one point in the video, the actor is baffled as he watches his younger self calls Ford “Hans” instead of “Han”, reminding him of how the cast and crew were confused about how to pronounce Han and Chewbacca’s names. It turns out, George Lucas didn’t really care about how they said it.
While Carrie Fisher isn’t present in the footage, Hamill does remember how she would call one of his facial expressions his “freshly punched look”.
He added that she was the final piece in the Star Wars puzzle and how she surprised him, “She was effortlessly feminist, you know? She wasn’t some shrinking violet that needed a guy to come rescue her. In fact, she made Han and Luke look like chumps!
“She was anything but what I expected. I mean, I sort of thought, ‘Well, she’s 19, that’s barely out of high school. And in many ways, she was a lot older and wiser than I was.”
When the scene ended, Hamill revealed he thought Luke Skywalker would be Han Solo’s sidekick in the film, not the main character.
“When I did this scene, I thought Han Solo was the lead character and I was the sidekick. Harrison was a bonafide leading man. So I thought he was Captain America and I was Bucky!
“So, when I eventually got the script and I opened to the front page it said, ‘The Star Wars: The Adventures of Luke Starkiller… I realised, ‘Oh my gosh! It’s through my eyes!'”
“Weeks later, I got a call from my agent and she said, ‘They want you for Star Wars.’ I couldn’t believe it.”
He finished by saying, “There wasn’t a day that we didn’t laugh a lot.”
The Rise of Skywalker hits cinemas on December 19.