Given all of Harrison Ford’s plane crashes and other aviation mishaps, on top of his long history of on-set injuries, fans can probably be forgiven for buying into each and every story about the actor having one kind of accident or another. For instance, the Star Wars veteran’s 2015 appearance on Conan, in which he rather ham-fistedly destroyed a stellar Millennium Falcon model, could easily be taken at face value as being a soul-crushing foible. Not that it was a genuine accident.
That viral talk show clip promoting J.J. Abrams’ 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens (which arguably remains more watchable than that film itself) sparked a lot of gasps at the time, and went mostly undiscussed for years. But the Indiana Jones legend finally reflected on that silly bit of destruction with Conan O’Brien himself in the latter’s podcast, so let’s dig into how it all came together.
What Originally Happened: Harrison Ford Dropped A Huge LEGO Millennium Falcon
As a longtime self-proclaimed nerd, Conan O’Brien was as fantastic a choice as any to devote a full talk-show episode to the then-impending release of The Force Awakens, with cast members Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, John Boyega, Gwendoline Christie, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o and Daisy Ridley appearing along with director J.J. Abrams. (Jimmy Kimmel Live! had its own Episode VII night two months earlier, but only had 5 of the aforementioned 9 guests.)
During the segment with Abrams and Ford, O’Brien’s longtime late night producer Jordan Schlansky initially appeared with a hilariously long-winded question about whether Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber shown in the trailer for The Force Awakens has six grips (as seen in A New Hope) or seven grips (as seen in The Empire Strikes Back). Which is really the tip-off point that none of this is an authentic experience. But then Ford is asked to sign Schlansky’s Falcon model, and mistakes are made, as seen below.
It’s such an unnatural way to drop something — flinging it back over one’s head — that it somehow makes it seem all the more realistic that it’s how Harrison Ford would instinctively handle it. Throw in him playing as if he was losing balance in his chair, and the sheen of realism is complete. Plus, nobody should ever innately want to believe that someone would purposefully smash in seconds what it took someone else many hours to build.
Harrison Ford Shares Hilarious Explanation For How It All Went Down
A little over eight years after that initial segment destroyed the Millennium Falcon, and five years after the ship suffered a similar amount of damage in Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ford guested on Team Coco’s podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend for a spot that was somehow just as funny as any of the actor’s appearances on Conan or Late Night. The way the Han Solo actor extends a simple drink of water into some Conan-interrupting gargling is just aces.
See Harrison Ford And Helen Mirren Reveal They Needed Literal Battery-Operated Underwear To Deal With Montana’s Frigid Cold In 1923
In any case, when Conan brings up that one of his favorite shared moments remains the segment where Ford dropped the LEGO model, which Schlansky had set up by explaining it took him 60 hours total to craft, and that it was one of the in-home displays he was most proud of. And then kablooey, LEGO blocks everywhere! Though to be fair, Ford did sign one of the pieces for the megafan producer.
After the past and future Oscars host O'Brien thanked the esteemed thespian for taking part, Ford opened up with an amusing take on the scripted nature of the scene, and how he was asked to do it, saying:
Well, those of you at home who don’t know how these things work, let me point out that this was a scripted bit. He didn’t build the damned thing. Somebody else in the prop department built the damn thing. It probably took him three weeks. He probably had to take it home and ask his kid to help him put it together. And then you built this whole schtick around it, and you made…well, you suggested that it would be funny if I destroyed it… And you were right.
Ford deadpanned that entire story to the point where Conan O'Brien sounded like he might offer up an excuse for even asking the Star Wars star to break the model, before Ford agreed it was funny and made the whole room crack up.
Conan O'Brien then shared this equally funny assumption about the actor's potential in the world of magic.
I’d like to point out that you’d be terrible working with a magician. Because the magician would come out and do a trick where he saws the lady in half and then puts her back together again. And just as the crowd is applauding, Harrison Ford walks out and says, ‘Excuse me, I’d like to point out that this was all a sad sham.’
Find Harrison Ford surviving harsh winters as Jacob Dutton a little more than a decade before LEGO became an official company in 1923, which can be streamed with a Paramount+ subscription.
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