This ‘Star Wars’ Star Really Didn’t Want to Play Himself in ‘The Simpsons’
The Simpsons has a long history of inviting big-name celebrities to play fictional, four-fingered versions of themselves on the show — from Leonard Nimoy, to Barry White, to Lucy Lawless, to a bunch of stars that the producers would probably rather forget all about.
Season 10’s “Mayored to the Mob” included a special treat for Star Wars fans: Mark Hamill guest-starred as, well, Mark Hamill. But in the world of the show, the actor behind Luke Skywalker isn’t above shilling for Sprint during fan convention appearances, and is happy to take a job performing in a dinner-theater production of Guys and Dolls while dressed in Luke’s Tattooinian garb.
In a new interview with News18, the Life of Chuck star revealed that, although he was a big fan of The Simpsons, he wasn’t thrilled that they didn’t offer him a more interesting character to play. “I always wanted to be on The Simpsons in the first five years, I loved that show,” Hamill said. “And (my agent) called and said, ‘Good news and bad news. They want you on The Simpsons. The bad news is they want you to play yourself,’” Hamill noted before expelling a loud, prolonged groan.
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In the episode’s DVD commentary, Hamill also said that he was slightly offended by the script. “I never appeared in my costume for money!” he protested before ultimately telling himself, “Get over yourself, it’s The Simpsons.”
The veteran voice actor wasn’t totally happy about the cameo and actually asked the show to give him more work to do. “Eventually I begged them, and they gave me a secondary character, where you didn’t recognize me,” Hamill recently recalled. This would explain why the Star Wars legend also randomly voices Homer’s Southern bodyguard training instructor Leavelle.
In addition to The Simpsons, Hamill was similarly irked by other TV shows that insisted he should play himself. “(It was) the same with The Big Bang Theory,” Hamill explained. “I said, ‘Can I play Leonard’s father or Sheldon’s uncle or something?’ No, they want you.”
“The problem is, when you’re playing another character, you don’t have to take responsibility for anything that you do, it’s the character, it's not you,” Hamill reasoned. “When you’re playing yourself, you say, ‘Would I really say that? That’s kind of mean to say to Penny, I shouldn’t say that.’ It’s more difficult. I’ve done it more than I would like to.”
To be fair, nobody watching The Simpsons would actually believe that the lightsaber-wielding cartoon version of Mark Hamill is anything close to the real one. Just like how nobody believed that they could actually buy him from the “Shopping at Home Network” for $80,000.
