Quick, think about Han Solo and the ideas that the character conjures in your head. Devil-may-care sensibility? Roguish charm? Those are the qualities that Harrison Ford brought to the role when he stepped into the character's boots in Star Wars: A New Hope, but we almost got a version of Han with an affinity for tossed salad and scrambled eggs. That's because it turns out that Kelsey Grammer actually tried out for the role over four decades ago. In a recent appearance on Conan, the actor opened up about being put in touch with a young George Lucas and said:
I walked up there, and I sat down and there's Lucas sitting there. He explains to me that they're doing this movie about a fairy tale in space. He said, 'There's two guys in it who go and rescue a princess. That's pretty much it,' and he said, 'I think maybe you're a little old for the younger guy and maybe a little too young for the older guy, but you might make a pretty good, sort of like a John Wayne character.' I thought, 'Oh I can do that,' and he said, 'Well I'll think about it,' and then that's the last I heard of it. Cut to two years later, I'm sitting in San Diego, I was working at the Shakespeare festival there, and I sat down for this movie and the big cruiser goes across the sky and it's Star Wars. I suddenly realized, 'Oh my god. This is that movie. That's that weird guy. That guy Lucas.'
Talk about how things could've shaken out differently. In the early days of Star Wars' development, Kelsey Grammer met with George Lucas and was briefly considered for Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. Not quite fitting into what Lucas wanted for either character, age-wise, Grammer tried out for Han and ultimately didn't hear back. In the end, he wound up seeing Star Wars and immediately knew what he was looking at when the movie began.
Check out everything that Kelsey Grammer had to say about the situation during his recent appearance on Conan, below!
Of course, it's clear that the Kelsey Grammer version of Han Solo would've been wildly different from Harrison Ford's for a variety of reasons. For starters, Grammer tends to bring a more refined persona to many of his most beloved characters, which makes it easy to believe that his Han might not have been as much of a cowboy. Moreover, as Grammer explained, he was only 20 years old at the time, so his Han would've been much younger than Ford's, as Ford was 34 years old when the Star Wars franchise began.
Despite how iconic Harrison Ford's portrayal of Han Solo has become, it is worth remembering that Kelsey Grammer is not the only now-famous actor who went out for the role. In addition to the future Frasier star, actors like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2's Kurt Russell and Seven Psychopaths' Christopher Walken similarly went out for it. In the end, however, there was only one true Han Solo, and that was Harrison Ford.
Now, Alden Ehrenreich has taken on the mantle, and you can catch the new Han Solo actor in Solo: A Star Wars Story, which is currently in theaters.
