One of the weirder trivia answers for Star Wars legend Mark Hamill is the fact that he’s hosted Saturday Night Live (SNL) a whopping zero times. Isn’t that weird? Luke Skywalker, arguably the most famous Star Wars character of all time (behind Baby Yoda, aka Grogu) has never hosted the quintessential late night show. Hamill recently shed some light on why that is.
In a deep dive with Hamill in Esquire, Hamill revealed that his Star Wars co-star Carrie Fisher “did it back in the day with the original cast.”
She did such a good job, he said, that it made him “really want to do it.” Also, SNL was his “favorite show.” Apparently, regardless of the fact that he’s one of the most recognizable faces in all of Hollywood, you can’t just tell your agent to order Lorne Michaels “Hey, book my client.”
There’s also a little issue of Hamill hosting a rival show on ABC called Fridays, which was a direct competitor with a similar format.
“And I think—I’m not sure, again, I’m just speculating—but I have a feeling that that might have been a factor in not being thought favorably of by Lorne Michaels.”
Michaels is or course the long time producer of SNL, and presumably the last word when it comes to booking hosts. So does this mean he wouldn’t do it? Not at all.
“It’s one of those things where if they asked me, you’d have to do it. You accept the challenge. But the fact that they don’t ask me is fine, because I’m perfectly happy to be in the audience and not have the pressure of being on live television like that.”
Something tells me he’s suddenly on Michaels’ radar, so it wouldn’t be too surprising if we see Hamill’s name pop up as host some time in the near future. In the meantime, we’ll always have Hamill’s hilarious voice acting to help us get our fill of his more comedic side.