PETER MAYHEW
REMEMBERING THE LATE STAR WARS ICON
When Star WARS erupted in 1977, it gave a shot of fame to everyone – not just the billboard-friendly faces but the unseen troupers too, the talent encased in gold plating or masked by the black visage of a Sith Lord. Anthony daniels. dave prowse. Kenny Baker. their modestly British names were enshrined on the backs of bubblegum cards and breathless pages in Star Wars
Weekly, as synonymous with that galaxy far, far away as the topline players.
“the big chance came, and so I took it,” remembered the late peter Mayhew, who brought rangy, soulful life to Chewbacca, han Solo’s Wookiee sidekick. “Star Wars was such a unique opportunity that I couldn’t refuse. It’s an opportunity that only strikes once, so you might as well make the most of it.”
At 7’ 3”, Mayhew’s towering height – the result of an overactive pituitary gland – was the key to that life-defining break. his stature gave him everyday problems (“telephone booths are sheer murder, the receiver seems like it’s down around my knees!”), but it caught the attention of a newspaper looking for the biggest feet in Britain. those size 16s earned a first taste of fame for a man quietly but happily working as a porter at King’s College hospital.
Mayhew’s picture was seen by Charles h Schneer, producer of ray harryhausen’s dynamation epics. Schneer cast him as the bronze, bull-headed Minoton in Sinbad and
the Eye Of the tiger. the role went uncredited but it led directly to Star Wars. “they’re looking for someone big,” Mayhew was told, as he always was. At elstree he saw concept art of two potential parts, equally oversized. “And I thought, ‘darth Vader – no. Chewbacca – yes.’ I looked at the character and said, ‘I can do something with that. that has possibilities.’”
Mayhew waited in George Lucas’s office, parking his skyscraping frame on the sofa. “he and [producer] Gary Kurtz walked in. I did the natural thing. I stood up. Basically, that was the interview. he turned to Gary and said, ‘I think we’ve found him.’”
“He was perfect,” Lucas later recalled. “When peter put on that costume, he instantly became the embodiment of the character.”
Mayhew took himself to the zoo, after being cast, to study primates and bears, looking for physical cues. It was the actor’s own physicality, however, that made Chewbacca so much more than simply a shambling cosmic Bigfoot. Wordless, the character came alive on screen, whether crabby, tickled or skittish, heartbroken at a friend’s fate or smugly winning at holographic chess. Above all it was Mayhew’s eyes – bright but melancholy – that held the spirit of a 200-year-old Wookiee warrior.
“Much of my personality has gone into Chewie, and people can pick those bits out,” he said. “there are quirky movements that nobody else does. I feel that I’ve put a great deal of peter Mayhew into Chewbacca.”
Mayhew wore the shaggy yak-hair suit across the original trilogy and made guestshots as Chewie in everything from the Muppet Show to Donny and Marie. Frustrated by a lack of acting offers after return Of the Jedi, he set up a furniture-making business in Yorkshire then joined the Sharpie-wielding
Star Wars convention circuit, where he met his future wife, Angie.
George Lucas recalled him to Kashyyyk in 2005’s revenge Of the Sith. A decade later Mayhew was reunited with original co-star harrison Ford in the Force awakens, although a double knee replacement surgery in 2013 – a consequence of age and height – had left him incapacitated as a physical performer.
As he remembered telling incoming director JJ Abrams, “I laid my cards on the counter. I said, ‘Look, I can’t walk. I can do most things, but the only thing I can’t really do is walk. But I can do the facial expressions and everything else like that for Chewie.’ And he said, ‘right, we’ll find out what you have to do and we’ll get it done.’”
It would be Mayhew’s final performance as Chewbacca. With 2017’s the Last Jedi, the role was inherited by Joonas Suotamo, who had body-doubled him on the Force awakens.
peter Mayhew died on 30 April in Boyd, texas, aged 74. In a statement, harrison Ford remembered him as “a kind and gentle man, possessed of great dignity and noble character”. Mark hamill added, “he was the gentlest of giants. A big man with an even bigger heart who never failed to make me smile and a loyal friend who I loved dearly.”
George Lucas paid tribute too, to the man who had so brilliantly personified a piece of his imagination – and won so much love from the world in doing so. “he was the closest any human being could be to a Wookiee: big heart, gentle nature – and I learned to always let him win.”
Much of my personality has gone into Chewie. There are quirky movements that nobody else does