Connie's Warwick Davis Fanpage and Leprechaun Center

Starlog: Excerpt from Kenny Baker Interview

This is an excerpt from Starlog Movie Series #6: Sci-Fi People #1, printed in 1999. The magazine consists of reprints of previous Starlog articles, and multiple articles about the same person were blended into one for this issue. The original publication dates were not indicated, and it's impossible to determine when the statements printed below were made. But I get the impression that this quote originated not too long after the release of Return of the Jedi.

The magazine also included an article about Warwick Davis, but it's not reprinted here because the original articles that it's based on are already on the website. Now, on with the excerpt:

 

[Kenny Baker]: "In Return of the Jedi, I was hardly in the film at all as Artoo. It was the remote-controlled robot all the time. That's why I got involved with the Ewoks. Originally, I played Wicket. What happened was that I was ill one day with a stomach cramp - I've had it two to three times. It doubles you up, because at first, you think you have appendicitis. I don't know what it was, but anyway, it disappeared eventually. But it wasn't very funny then.

"I spent a day in bed, and because they were on a tight schedule for filming, little Warwick Davis took my part as Wicket. To be honest, he looked better anyway - he was smaller, and he looked good as a little Ewok. He pinched my part, but I'm not bothered. He's a nice little fellow, and he needs all the work he can get - I've got my act; he has only whatever they can give him in films. But I lost the part of Wicket because I was sick, and there wasn't much you could do about it. There was a main scene I had, too, with Carrie Fisher. That was a shame - but then again, it was an Ewok, it wasn't me.

"I would rather be inside R2-Dr, or be playing myself, like in Time Bandits. I would rather be myself than inside an Ewok. They are cute little characters, but not much fun to work in."

Baker did finally appear as the Ewok Paploo, while his partner played Teebo. The little people in the Ewok costumes was an innovation first employed in Jedi - a costuming experiment getting its first field test. As Baker discovered, the costumes could become very claustrophobic and constricting for their wearers. "The Ewok [costumes] were terrible to work in," the actor charges. "Horrible. You could die in one of those things and nobody would know! You couldn't get out - you were helpless. You were zipped in, clipped in and then when you had all that on, they put on the shoulder bands, leather headpieces, armaments, belts with bullets in them - all kinds of things so that you could never get out of it. It was murder!

"I vowed I would never do an Ewok again because it was so uncomfortable. I didn't actually pass out, but I had to pack it in one day and say, 'I can't do any more.'

"So, I didn't enjoy Jedi very much, because I wasn't working as much in Artoo, and because I was stuck as an Ewok."