The stuff that went on behind the scenes on the set of Star Wars: A New Hope never ceases to entertain, especially for diehard Star Wars fans like myself. Mark Hamill has shared a few gold nuggets about Star Wars over the years, but now we’ve got a great one: the time Mark Hamill planned to say his phone number in the iconic trash compactor scene in A New Hope.
This has recently been unearthed by Jordan D. White, the senior editor of the X-Men comics at Marvel. He shared on social media an interview with Mark Hamill from an unknown source, with Hamill claiming he planned to use his phone number when reading a serial number to C-3PO while trapped in a trash compactor. Here’s what he said:
For those who can’t remember, the number he says in the movie is 326-3827. Was this Mark Hamill’s phone number? Did they swap it out in post? It’s hard to say for sure either way. At face value, that certainly looks like someone’s phone number.
This improvised, and may I say genius, move by Mark Hamill to include his phone number on film forever wasn’t the only time he improvised a line on set. When Mark Hamill wore the stormtrooper suit on the Death Star, he actually couldn’t see anything. So he said his famous line “I can’t see a thing in this helmet” to Harrison Ford when he thought they weren’t filming. George Lucas liked it and decided to let him keep saying it in additional takes.
Perhaps other than this phone number gag, I love the on-set fighting between Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill. Harrison Ford acts like a big brother picking on his little brother, and it’s great. They always seemed to have a fun time together on set. Mark Hamill even praised Alec Guiness as a saint for putting up with their antics.
The way they acted, you’d assume they had known each other for a long time, but that would be far from the truth. They actually first met each other at a Star Wars screen test. Mark Hamill didn’t even know what the movie was about when he read lines with Harrison Ford.
Sadly, the once tight-knit duo haven’t shared scenes together since Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi. Even so, Mark Hamill still likes to pick at Harrison Ford every now and then with an incredible impression of the actor. He admitted that he doesn’t think Harrison Ford is very fond of the impression, with Ford telling him, “I don’t sound anything like that.”
With Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill officially saying goodbye to their Star Wars characters, the chances are next to nil we’ll be able to see them in another Star Wars movie together. Still, that doesn’t rule out them teaming up for another movie, does it? I think they’d be great in a buddy cop movie.
