During a recent panel interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub at FanX in Salt Lake City, Maul’s Sam Witwer spoke about a moment in the eighth episode of Maul: Shadow Lord where the titular character had visions of his brother, Savage Opress, and also Emperor Palpatine.
As these were visions inside Maul’s head, the team made a creative choice to have Witwer voice the characters. However, Witwer teased that, should Palpatine show up in a future season of Maul — Shadow Lord outside a vision, it would no longer be him voicing the character: “I will say something. The show is about revenge against [Palpatine], correct? So let’s say that if at some point we were going to see that character outside of [Maul’s] head … I’m not sure I would be playing [him].”
In addition to starring in the lead role in Maul — Shadow Lord, Sam Witwer also serves as a consulting producer on the show, meaning he often gives insight into plot, character, and overall story decisions. When asked during the recent panel at FanX to elaborate on this expanded role, Witwer called back to the aforementioned moment in Episode 8, saying that “I’m happy to say that I had the opportunity to light the wick on it, because anything you do in Star Wars is a mass collaboration.”
Witwer even confirmed that supervising director Brad Rau was the one who told him, “If this is all playing out in his head, in these hallucinations, then you need to do all the voices. Do your best Clancy Brown, do your best Emperor…” This led to him ultimately revealing that, if Palpatine is going to appear in Maul — Shadow LordSeason 2, or possibly even a future season, it could well be legendary actor Ian McDiarmid doing the voice work. In addition to playing the character in live-action for decades, McDiarmid has also voiced Palpatine in Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Tales of the Jedi, and Star Wars: Rebels
Watch the interview in full here, and stream the first season of Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord on Disney+ now.
Image: Collider
