Why David Prowse Was Not Allowed To Attend Official 'Star Wars' Events

Lucasfilm usually does not take lightly when one of its employees or contractors behaves inappropriately or says something out of line. Recent examples like Colin Trevorrow, Christopher Miller, Phil Lord, and author Chuck Wendig among others could testify. However, cutting ties with one of its stars or even penalizing them is not something that has started only after Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012. 

Back in 2010, Lucasfilm banned actor Dave Prowse, who donned the armor of Darth Vader in the original trilogy, from ever taking part in any official Star Wars convention. Supposedly this was triggered by things that Prowse had said in the documentary The People vs. George Lucas, but the relationship between the British weightlifting champion and the company behind Star Wars was troubled nearly from the get-go.

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George Lucas cast Prowse mainly for his physicality. He was given the choice to either play Chewbacca or Darth Vader. As both roles meant that the audience would not see his face, he chose to play the villain, thus creating one of the most recognized and iconic figures in cinema history. His first disillusionment with Lucasfilm arose when Star Wars was first released in cinemas back in 1977. Prowse, who spoke with a thick British accent, had assumed that they would use his own voice for that of Vader. Only when he saw the movie on the big screen did he realize that all of his lines had been dubbed with the voice of James Earl Jones without telling him beforehand.

Then in 1978, Prowse spoke in front of Star Wars fans at a store in California, telling them that shooting for Star Wars II (as the sequel was called back then) would begin in 1979, followed by Star Wars III some years later. During that same event he also said:

“Father can’t kill son, son can’t kill father, so they live again to star in Star Wars IV.”

Prowse later claimed that this was no leaked information, but just a lucky guess on his part. This was absolutely plausible as at that time the script for Empire Strikes Back was far from complete, so none of the actors could have had a complete picture of the plot of Star Wars II. Still, Prowse’s “leak” was picked up and printed by at least one newspaper. Hard to imagine what would have happened, had the internet existed back then.

This incident, as small and unintentional as it might have been, was still enough to mark Prowse as a “security risk.” So, when shooting the famous scene between Vader and Luke on Bespin, Prowse did not get to say “No, I am your father,” (which was added much later in post-production) but rather that Obi-Wan killed Luke’s father. Again, Prowse learned that his assumption from two years earlier was actually true only after the movie had come out.

But the drama was still far from over.

In 1982, roughly one year before the release of Return of the Jedi, a British newspaper wrote an article stating that Darth Vader would die at the end of the movie. As his reputation was already badly damaged, the blame was quickly laid on Prowse, who rejected all accusations, as he was never given the whole script for the movie.

Still, the damage was done, and Prowse was completely sidelined when the movie was shot. Neither Lucas nor director Richard Marquand talked to him anymore. Although Prowse was credited for playing Darth Vader also in Return of the Jedi it was mostly Olympic fencer Bob Anderson in the suit.

When the scene where Vader lifts up Palpatine and throws him into the shaft was shot, the person in the black suit could not raise Ian McDiarmid the way it was intended. The crew even used wires to get the Emperor into the air, but it still did not look right. Finally, Prowse, who was used to lifting heavy weights, suggested that he would do the scene. He completed it in one take.

The next shock for Prowse came when he found out that even at the end of the movie, when Luke removed the helmet of his dying father, the audience still would not see Prowse’s face, but that of Sebastian Shaw. And again, Prowse did not get that information from Lucas or Marquand but from a British journalist who had ambushed him in a gym. Right until his death in 2020 Prowse had nothing but disdain for Marquand, who passed away in 1987.

After Return of the Jedi, Prowse lost contact with Lucas but was still very present in the fan community at the time when Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford did not want to have anything to do with the movies that had made them famous. Maybe as a way to heal the emotional wounds he had endured, he often wrote “Dave Prowse IS Darth Vader” on his autograph cards.

Over the years and decades after the end of the original trilogy, the relationship between Lucasfilm and Prowse did not improve much. The last straw that got the actor banned from all Lucasfilm conventions was Prowse’s appearance in the 2010 documentary The People vs. George Lucas. Prowse always claimed that he had not known that his interview would be used for the movie, as he spoke to a lot of people about Star Wars. Still, Lucas was obviously unhappy with Prowse’s words and shortly after The People vs. George Lucas was released, he got the information that he was no longer welcome at any official Lucasfilm conventions.

Still, for a couple of years later, until his deteriorating health prevented him from traveling Prowse would often rent a hotel room near the location of a Star Wars convention. He would meet up with fans and sign photos and other merchandise with “Dave Prowse IS Darth Vader.”

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Written By Gerald Petschk

Source(s): CBR, Retroist, Den of Geek

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