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16th Dec 2017

Mark Hamill describes the pressure of keeping one of the biggest twists in cinema history a secret

"Hey kid, you didn't fuckin' tell me that."

Conor Heneghan

“Hey kid, you didn’t fuckin’ tell me that.”

There’s hardly a need for a spoiler alert considering the movie is nearly 40 years old, but it’s fair to say that the revelation that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father in The Empire Strikes Back remains to this day one of the biggest plot twists in the history of the movie business.

Following the release of the latest instalment in the Star Wars series, The Last Jedi, in cinemas this week, the main cast members appeared on The Graham Norton Show on Friday night, where Luke Skywalker himself (Mark Hamill) described that bombshell being dropped on him well before many of his fellow cast members knew what was going on.

Hamill described the burden of having to keep the plot twist a secret for “a year and a half” before it was eventually revealed at a screening.

Hamill’s recollection of the entire episode is brilliant, but it’s worth watching for his impersonation of Harrison Ford alone, which drew the response it deserved from the rest of the couch, from Norton and from the studio audience.

You can read the JOE review of The Last Jedi right here.