Star Wars Best Villain Got The Role Because Of His Nose
Almost no matter your age at the time when Return of the Jedi was first released, you likely distinctly remember being mentally terrified of the Emperor. Not the full-fledged physical fear reserved for Freddy Kreuger or Norman Bates, because this was the relative sci-fi equivalent.
It was terrifying thinking that the biggest, baddest, heaviest-breathing dude in the universe, Darth Vader, actually had someone above him calling the shots. Add to that a face with wrinkles adding up like jelly beans in a jar, and the character was forever memorable. Twenty-seven years later, Lucas doesn’t even have to do anything to sort of ruin it for me.
Ian McDiarmid appeared at the New York Comic Con back in 2012 this year and gave fans their nerdbucks’ worth in a panel full of whimsical tales. The one in particular that floated to the top of the pile was his story about how he actually got the job playing the Emperor. It was all in the nose.
The whole story, found here, tells the tale of how Lucas & Co., interested in McDiarmid for his stage performance of Howard Hughes, only saw him because the original, much older actor couldn’t wear the yellow contact lenses we’ve become so familiar with.
After being called down to meet George Lucas and director Richard Marquand, McDiarmid says they spoke about a few things and the conversation ended without instilling much hope in him. As he got to the door, George called out to him, “Hey! Great nose!” He gets back home later to answer a phone call that says he got the job.
This ended up being fortuitous casting. For starters, Ian McDiarmid started by playing the role of the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. But then, 16 years later and without all the makeup (to start) he reprised the role only starting off this time as Chancellor Palpatine in The Phantom Menace. It was a crazy about-face in, well, menace because he starts that movie rather unassuming.
But, of course, over the next three movies, we see the ultimate shift to evil as the Emperor and eventual Sith Lord, who ends up taking down the Jedi at the time. That Ian McDiarmid was able to play the Emperor role in both incarnations and timelines was remarkable. For whatever the prequel trilogies were or weren’t, his character maintained that level of evil we saw the first time around.
And the dude even managed to come back around again in 2019 when The Rise of Skywalker came out and retconned so much of what happened before. Was it a fumble by the Star Wars franchise to bring him back this way? Probably. But again, Ian McDiarmid is just so good in the role that it’s tough to totally blame them for rounding out the trilogies by having him around.
In all, Ian McDiarmid played the role in five of the Star Wars movies and made his presence felt in every one of them. It was well worth that nose making a great impression the first time around.
