Original Darth Vader Actor Hasn’t Spoken To Lucas Since 1983 November 4, 2007
Posted by showmescifi in scifi.Tags: Darth Vader, david prowse, george lucas, Sci Fi, science fiction, scifi, Star Wars
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Talk about bearing a grudge. In a recent interview David Prowse the ORIGINAL Darth Vader actor revealed that due to a dispute he had with George Lucas nearly 25 years ago he hasn’t spoke with Lucas since 1983.
Lucas seems like a nice enough dude to me – so what did Prowse do to be totally ignored by Lucas for over two decades?
In a nutshell he betrayed George Lucas’s trust…or did he???
I always wondered why we never EVER see David Prowse unmasked in Star Wars…
In the interview Prowse details what actually happened:
So, I get a phone call from a reporter saying ‘I’d like to do an article all about you and your weightlifting’. He turned up at my gymnasium that evening and halfway through he says, ‘you know you’re being killed off in this movie, don’t you? And another guy’s playing the dying Darth Vader?’ I said ‘they wouldn’t do that – they wouldn’t go and unmask somebody else after I’ve played the part for six years’. He asked if I had a call sheet, and he looked at it and it said: ‘Dave Prowse, Darth Vader, Studio 1’, and underneath it ‘Sebastian Shaw, Anakin Skywalker, Studio 10’. He finished the interview abruptly as soon as he’d told me all this and the next day The Daily Mail had the headline: ‘Darth Vader to be killed off in the next movie, in an exclusive interview with Dave Prowse’. And that ruined my association with Star Wars. I was ostracized while on the movie, the producer and director wouldn’t work with me and Lucas wouldn’t speak to me.
Sounds like a real Sith plot to me.
Read the full interview on the Void.
Show Me SciFi 
Lucas is clearly a visionary in many ways, and with that gift often comes a certain arrogance, single-minded focus, and (with success) an organizational machine that is set up to enforce this world-view. I’d guess that once he’d heard that Prowse had let the plot cat out of the bag (even if he really hadn’t), the machine went on autopilot and excluded him. Kind of tragic for Prowse and his career.
The real thing is that Prowse thinks he IS the superstar of Star Wars, for example all other SW actors on his level charge at conventions $20 dollars (P.Mayhew, Tem Morrison, K. Baker, R. Park) per autograph, he charges $30 dollars (only C. Fisher, Mark Hamill or Tony Daniels charge more) so he always had this little thing that since Darth Vader is a key character on the Star Wars movies…he thinks he is THE REAL DEAL and it’s not. He was just the dude with the suit, and that’s it. I’m not saying he is a bad person or anything because he is great with the fans and does conventions but he’s a little bit full of himself and I’ve heard he charges fan groups with a lot of silly requests, like limos and those kinda things.
Anyway I think he’s right on some aspects, because Tony Daniels can be a little annoying sometimes, even with fans.
Interesting…I wasn’t aware of Prowse’s personal hubris.
The fact of the matter is, Darth Vader IS the key character of the Star Wars universe. But because he remained masked through out the original trilogy, David Prowse was relegated to the lower tier of Star Wars actors like Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker. The fact that his voice was dubbed over by James Earl Jones especially sealed his fate as to be cast in this particular order.
I admittedly at one time had sympathized with David Prowse in regard to his fued with Lucas, being a Vader man myself. But in later years, Prowse’s ego, and the impossible claims he’s made, such as that he had originally been cast to play Superman and Conan the Barbarian, but had been thrown aside for Christopher Reeves and Arnold Schwartzenegger respectively, has only served to make him sound like a buffoon.
The fact is, Darth Vader is too big to be identified with just one actor, in the manner that Luke Skywalker clearly is Mark Hammil. David Prowse had the honor and privilege to fill the armor of the greatest sci-fi villain of all time. But he is clearly not Darth Vader – the Dark Lord stands alone.
I would truly be interested in knowing what all George Lucas has to say about Dave Prowse. I would love to know his side of the story. I have a real problem with Dave prowse’s ego. I had been a fan of his ever since I was just a little girl. I saw him in Horror of Frankenstein back in the early 70’s and was captivated ever since. About a year or so ago I wrote to him but never got anything back from him. I thought that me being a fan of his for 36 years would have meant something to him, but I guess it didnt mean anything at all. It seems as though he says the same things over and over and over again in interviews about how he was cheated out of things in the filming of the movies. I would hate to carry that kind of bitterness for all the years that he has. You would think that after being treated the way he was, he wouldnt want to have anything to do with Star Wars, but he has never let it go. I had no idea that Mr.Prowse had been cast for Superman and Conan. All I ever heard was that he lobbied pretty hard for the part of Superman. All I can say to this is that Christopher Reeve was a very beautiful man and I cant see anyone playing superman but him.
Mr. Prowse, your terrible arrogance is your downfall.
http://videobrowse.blogspot.com/2010/03/preliminaries-funny-embus-video.html
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Thank you. However he is right, Lucas seems to have leaked the info himself.
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