Yesterday, at Ian McDiarmid’s panel (which Scarlett Robotica will be recapping in its entirety later for your enjoyment) there were quite a few mentions of the Star Wars live action show.
But they didn’t necessarily originate with the crowd.
They originated with McDiarmid.
This seems very unusual for a guy who says he just sort of walks away from the world of movies when he’s not physically making them and doesn’t keep up and just puts on his plays. But he started saying things that seemed a little bit more specific than I would have expected. He seemed to be talking from a place of knowledge.
Or maybe he was trolling the lot of us. But McDiarmid seems too… Legitimate and British to do that.
The first hint he dropped was almost a throwaway. He was discussing the differences between acting with physical sets and using your imagination and then spoke about how astonished he was that it was just as expensive to build something in real life as it was to do it digitally. Then, from no where, he explains that this is the reason George is holding off on the live action series.
He talked about it in about as much depth as anyone who pretty closely follows Star Wars news would know, so it didn’t seem too odd, but McDiarmid just doesn’t seem like that kind of guy.
Then, as he began to talk about Palpatines back story he said rather coyly, “It’d be nice to see if Palpatine’s back story was followed up… wouldn’t it?”
Which you can think was just him being interested, but there was something about the way he said it that felt like it was a hint.
I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. A fan finally got to ask a question and asked him point blank if he’d do the live action TV show. A smile grew across his face and he answered thusly:
“If he happened to pop up in the script and I was still alive, I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get to do it.”
And he said it in a way dripping with double meaning. Maybe that’s just what Ian McDiarmid does. And maybe that’s why he’s The Phantom Menace, and I’m letting my imagination run away with me due to years of dissecting and re-dissecting the double meanings in every one of Palpatine’s machinations, but I really do feel like McDiarmid was speaking from a place of knowledge here.
But… We don’t know for sure.
This is just conjecture, but I feel it’s well reasoned conjecture. And I’m not the only one to think so. Others are pointing out the same things.
Look for Scarlet’s recount of the entire panel later in the day, with more pictures!
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