I got a chance to interview the man in the golden mask during this years San Diego Comic-Con, Anthony Daniels.  He was there to talk about Star Wars in Concert, which will be coming to a city near you in the coming months.  (Tickets are on sale now.)

He’s hosting it, and it would be best to let him describe the show in his own words, because I think he describes it better than I can:

Anthony Daniels: It’s a breathtakingly, huge, spectacular, rock concert, orchestral experience.  It really does have the majesty and hugeness of an amazing rock concert.  But, on the stage is basically a symphony orchestra and conductor, a highly skilled and clever conductor, and behind them is a 100 foot LED screen that emits a huge amount of light and it’s there principally, partly it shows the workings of the orchestra as the music goes along, because we’ve got a lot of cameras within the auditorium and on stage, but it’s there also there to show 10 or 12 specially re-edited sequences from all the Star Wars films all put together to work on a certain theme.  A theme might be about…I don’t know…the Dark Side and there John Williams, scores, he’s re-worked his scores to fit together with the specially recut films.  The lighting and sound and lasers are huge and wonderful and beautiful.  And in the middle of all this, I stroll on, calm and serene, and tell the story of Star Wars in segments followed by films and music and so on.  And you follow the very, very simple theme of Star Wars.  For instance, if you’ve never seen Star Wars, this is instant story.  You get it.  You get the main theme of it.  The going to the bad, the coming good, the redemption which is basically what it’s all about that journey.  On screen you may see all the elements that may tweak your memory superbly, but we don’t necessarily talk about them.  And that makes for a very simple, very direct, rather beautiful show.

He also spoke about his connection with Threepio.  I asked him what it was like to be the one actor from the original films whose be the mainstay in the series who had done all of the ancillary properties, cartoons, video games, etc.

AD: It’s almost become… not a duty, but almost a responsibility.  I feel I should, strangley, I’ve not really thought about that.  But I think I almost feel an obligation to Threepio more than to George, certainly he wouldn’t want me to be obligated.  I feel Threepio needs me, in a way, that he’d be rather upset if I went away.  I’ll have to ask him one time.  It’s been a bit of a privelige to be able to be a part of so many things.  And of course what many people won’t realize is that Threepio’s voice is actually quite hard to do.  He’s so tense as a character and creating his voice creates a certain amount of tension and sort of uptightness and so your stomach muscles can get really–and back muscles–can get quite knotted after a recording session.  And because he is not a relaxed character, therefore you cannot reproduce his voice in a relaxed way and I often think I should have come up with a more…  Do you remember HAL in 2001?

At that point in the interview, he went into quite an impressive facsimile of HAL from 2001.

We also spoke about his favorite moments as Threepio, how he approaches the part from the perspective of being in the costume on set.  He also talks about Threepio’s relationship with Han Solo.

It was a pleasure to do the interview, and I hope it’s a pleasure for you to listen to.  You can download the full interview from The Geek Show Podcast by clicking this sentence.

I would also highly recommend subscribing to their full feed on iTunes.  (You can click that here.)