Katee Sackhoff and Sam Witwer Discuss ‘The Clone Wars’, ‘The Mandalorian’, Lucasfilm Loyalty, and More
Katee Sackhoff launched her podcast BlahBlahBlah about six months ago and Star Wars connected guests are predictably making the rounds, including Bryce Dallas Howard or this past week’s guest, Sam Witwer. I tuned in for Witwer given the pair’s history working on both Battlestar Galactica and The Clone Wars (as well as the numerous other miscellaneous Star Wars projects Sam Witwer has been involved in.) Currently, BlahBlahBlah is releasing twice a week and you can find it on Youtube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
I have to admit that when I saw she announced a podcast I thought “oh boy, another celebrity podcast” and had commensurately low expectations. I’ve only listened to this one episode with Witwer, but it was pretty interesting and I even laughed out loud a few times. Sackhoff is charming, kind and skilled at keeping the conversation moving. And notably for us Star Wars fans, there were a couple small anecdotes that bear mentioning–check these out below.
Speaking about the nerves she felt taking up so much of the narrative on The Mandalorian season 3, Sackhoff commented:
“…I was so intimidated by the amount of work that I had and the amount of the story that they had given me, and the faith that they had in me. I have said this many times that he [Favreau] held my hand throughout that season. I got pep talks all the time. He was amazing the entire time. He was like ‘you were right for this role the moment we hired you. Just do what you do as Bo, you know this character better than anybody. Just do that.’ But he did he believed in me so much, and I leaned on that multiple times, because there were times when my mind would start to run, and I would get ahead of myself and I would get into what people were going to say and what they would think of my performance…because it’s Star Wars everyone is going to say something [laughing] everyone is going to have an opinion, and you know going in you can’t win them all.”
Sam Witwer shared a story that gives a noteworthy glimpse into the behind-the-scenes work that goes into animated, or perhaps video game projects, he’s not specific on what they were working on here. I think this story is a helpful reminder about the amount of passion and effort that goes into each and every project and the deadlines and other internal pressures staff often face when completing their part. Check it out:
“…Whenever I watched people like Dave Filoni or David Collins, he had just started working at Skywalker [Ranch] on the tv shows, and there was this moment where a pilot needed to do something with a star figher…it was this moment where a character was getting fired on and he’s flying this starfighter and he does something like this [shift changing movement] and shows the starfighter shoot off and David is like ‘okay so that needs to be a moment, it needs to be a big clunky sound and then he zips off. So I think in Raiders of the Lost Ark I’m going to see if I can get that engine sound, that sound from the truck’ and he pulled it up on the library and put that in and then ‘okay I think they had a really cool buzzy engine in Attack of the Clones‘ and he takes that and he pulls it in and then ‘now I’m going to take that and reverse it, blah blah blah.’ And he’s going at warp speed. I’m watching him work so fast. And finally he hits play and I’m like ‘dude that’s awesome!’ and he says ‘I can’t spend that much time on the next piece, I’ve got to catch up.’…and I was just shocked at how fast that was and he was giving himself s*** for being too slow. And the thing that we all learn…there you are on set on The Mandalorian and you’ve got maybe two takes to get that key moment out and it has to be perfect. So this whole concept of people like ‘well I would do it differently’ no you wouldn’t, I promise you, you wouldn’t.”
Elaborating further on the breakneck speed these projects move at, Sackhoff shared the below story:
“There was a moment…in the middle of filming, and you can’t stop, and we couldn’t get Bo’s helmet on my head with my wig, because it [the helmet] was made to fit my head, not Bo’s head, not the wig. And when you put the wig on it adds a lot of space between the helmet and my head…so we’re like ‘what are we going to do? we need this shot’ and Dave literally goes ‘somebody made Ann [Convery] a helmet, a fan, it’s up in my office right now. I think that it’s an empty dome, let me go get it.’ And we literally used it in the shot and then they CGI’d it.”
I always enjoy hearing anecdotes about working with Lucasfilm whether that’s on set for a show like The Mandalorian or a smaller animated project, especially when those experiences are generally positive. And certainly, with both Witwer and Sackhoff having worked with Lucasfilm now for more than a decade and to still speak about their experiences in such a glowing way is a testament to Lucasfilm culture. You can listen to the full episode here.
When she isn't watching her friends and family's eyes glaze over at the mention of The Clone Wars, she's at the park with her dog, Melvin, or on the couch with a book in one hand and a drink in the other. Physically, she lives in Ohio; spiritually, she lives in Naboo.
