You’re reading part 2/3 of our Darth Plagueis adaptation series.
Who would be the best actor to portray a young Palpatine or Darth Plagueis himself? How would you cast a droid built in Star Wars‘ prequel era?
Now that our series format has been discussed it is now time to discuss what actors that would be best suited for this Star Wars prequel-prequel.
Darth Plagueis / Hego Damask
Darth Plagueis, known publicly as Hugo Damask, is described in the book as a Muun raised on the planet Mygeeto. Muuns are tall lanky aliens with pale skin who are commonly known in the Star Wars galaxy for their archetypal professions as bankers and lawyers. We get a brief glimpse of a Muun in Attack of the Clones in the form of San Hill, who is head of the Intergalactic Banking Clan (IBC) and a supporter of Count Dooku.
Muuns are native to the temperate planet Muunilinst. However, because Hugo Damask was born on Mygeeto, a cold mountainous world, it’s possible he may have a slightly more robust appearance with maybe darker or lighter skin tone to help distinguish him from the other Muuns.
The Movement – Doug Jones
In terms of technicality, this is a character that needs to be CGI. However, the truly bring this character to life there is a necessity for motion capture to feel believable. In that regard because Muuns are tall slender beings it makes sense to hire a performance artist based around those dimensions. Contortionist Doug Jones has done similar work for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, The Shape of Water, and currently as Captain Saru in Star Trek: Discovery.
The Voice – Charles Dance
In terms of the vocal performance, this needs someone who’s voice is deep and threatening but still diplomatic. If I want to go for a well-known actor with a distinct voice, it would be actor Charles Dance. Most may know him from Game of Thrones as Tywin Lannister, his voice and presence being menacing enough to send King Joffrey to go to his room without supper. Imagine Dance telling the future Emperor to do the same.
Alternate Voice – Daniel Davis
However, despite Dance being my choice for a famous name, I want to give a shout out to veteran actor Daniel Davis who provided the narration for the audiobook. His vocal performance is everything one could ask for a complex being such as Plagueis. His vocal range performance booming, and almost fatherly like someone who you can listen to all day and never get tired of. Much of my reason for making this article was because of listening to Davis’ read-through.
Darth Sidious / Sheev Palpatine
Because the book covers a period of roughly 40 years it is important to see the physical age of Palpatine over time. However, I do not like the idea of keeping the same young actor, slop on terrible makeup trying to convince us they are old now. Instead we will be taking The Crown‘s approach, where each actor is for a different time period.
Student Palpatine – Timothee Chalamet
For the first few episodes which accommodates the first third of the book, I’ve chosen Timothee Chalamet because he has potential to play a troubled young student but can play the seemingly innocent but manipulative youth.
The book describes Palpatine as 17 at this point in the story, though I am willing to age him up slightly (say, to 20) to accommodate the actor, given that Chalamet (age 25) still has that youthful look to play a collegiate scholar. The character of Palpatine before his encounter with Plagueis is a gifted student who possesses a lot of fascination with politics, but is shy to admit as such.
Ambassador/Senator Palpatine – Tom Hiddleston
In this timeframe Palpatine would be approaching 30 and already an experienced and gifted politician that has risen to become Naboo’s ambassador and later appointed senator to the Galactic Republic upon the death of his mentor, Vidar Kim. (er, spoiler?)
Hiddleston, no doubt thanks to his Loki persona in the MCU, certainly has the talent to pull off over the top “unlimited power”. However, much like the prequel trilogy this show focuses more on the duality of Darth Sidious rather than the caricature we’ve been so accustomed to. A well-spoken gentile figure publicly, cloaked ruthless figure privately. The maniacal laugh and raspy voice he’s known for is something only for later in his life. Instead, most of his time is dedicated to showing Palpatine as diplomatically intelligent and even willing to compromise and make deals to an end. Loki and Sidious have much in common, but this will not be another Loki Performance
Late-Stage Palpatine – Ian McDiarmid
The finale stages of the book start a few years before, and eventually come parallel to, the events of The Phantom Menace. At this stage it would be criminal not to involve Ian McDiarmid in this picture.
The only issue to take is Ian is now 77 and he’s playing a character who’s 30 years younger at this stage. I guess it’s time to bring back the Irishmen crew for their digital de-aging again. After all, those effects were also done by ILM. However, this should be handled carefully, especially where the lighting is concerned, so the CGI isn’t too distracting. Also given how rapidly deep fake technology has come it’s reasonable to apply some of that as well.
11-4D
One other character that this series has followed is a medical droid named 11-4D (“one-one four-Dee”). Discovered on a smuggler’s freighter when Plagueis killed its crew, 11-4D has served Plagueis in various capacities including assisting him in experiments intended to prolong life.
In many ways 11-4D is much like Baymax in Big Hero Six, he never goes against his program or becomes sentient to the point where he’s a robot trying to be alive, he serves like other droid characters in this series. Remember he works for the Sith. No doubt a lot of these servant droids have these acute British “core world” accents however, given that he was commandeered on smuggler’s ship, it’s not unreasonable to give him a much rougher American “wild space” accent.
Honestly, there’s no use in getting hung up on particular voice actors for this role, so I’ll nominate Colin Firth and Scott Adsit for the respective accents, but leave this mostly to the director’s choice for tone.
Given that this series is highly male-centric, I would not be opposed to having 11-4D done with a female voice as well. In a vacuum I’d like to throw out Helena Bonham Carter, but any appropriately accented female voice actor would work as well.
Side Characters
There are other characters in the novel I have selected possible actors for. However, for the sake of focus, I’m not going to give an in-depth summary as their roles will be covered in the next article.
Warning: This author (Peter) may have a slight bias towards Game of Thrones actors. Blame the
– Dirk, The Editor who also wants to see GoT actors in literally everything.Britishcore-world accents.
Cosinga Palpatine (“Papa” Palpatine) – James Faulkner
Vidar Kim (Naboo Senator) – David Threlfall
Ronhar Kim (Jedi Knight) – Kit Harington
King Veruna – Vincent Regan
Senator Pax Teem – Toby Jones
Sifo Dyas (Jedi Master) – Hiroyuki Sanada
Jedi Master Dooku – Michael McElhatton
Finally, we come to Jedi Master (later Count) Dooku.
It would be difficult to find an actor who can fill the late great Christopher Lee’s shoes. Granted His appearance in the book is minor so it’s possible to write him out and only have him mentioned in passing. However, it is not impossible to find an actor that is somewhat younger, but can convey that same presence and voice. Michael McElhatton, whom you may remember as Roose Bolton in Game of Thrones, isn’t far off from a younger Christopher Lee, and even his voice sounds very close to Dooku’s regal tone.
To be continued in part 3
An Alternative Cast
Editor’s Note/Epilogue: So we discovered while editing this article that we were not the first Star Wars
– Dirk Hortensius, Editornerdsfans to be giving this novel fan-casting a crack. Here is a Tumblr which contains a 95% different take by an independent blogger (@dalekofchaos). Consider this to be our “B”-roll of actor picks, should anyone refuse to answer our casting calls.
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