Mandalorian star Giancarlo Esposito says he practiced lightsaber fighting with a broomstick
His character wielded one of the most iconic lightsabers in Star Wars, but he practiced with a stick
The Mandalorian star Giancarlo Esposito has revealed he used to practice for his lightsaber fighting scenes with a broomstick.
Pretty much every Star Wars fan has at one point in their lives waved a stick around while making 'shoom, shoom' noises to pretend it's a lightsaber, and as it turns out so do the people who get to be in it.
Normally, lightsabers come in blue and green if you're a Jedi or red if you've fallen to the dark side and joined the Sith, but there are some very special and unique weapons and Giancarlo Esposito got to wield one of these.
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While Mace Windu gets a purple lightsaber because Samuel L Jackson wanted to spot himself in crowd scenes, Esposito got to wield the legendary Darksaber.
It's a pretty key item in The Mandalorian as whomever wields the Darksaber gets to rule the Mandalorian home planet, but it has to be won in battle by tradition.
The Mandalorian protagonist Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) won it from the villainous Moff Gideon (Esposito) in a fight at the end of the second season, and it turns out practicing for this battle needed a very special piece of kit.
In a recent interview with GQ, Esposito revealed he'd been 'very enthusiastic' about getting to practice his lightsaber fighting moves, and to figure out how be was going to do it while wearing a cape he trained with a broomstick.
He said: "The Darksaber was a wonderful thing to wield. There's only a few of us actors who've had the opportunity to wield such an iconic piece of equipment.
"We had a bunch of different swords. Sometimes the hilt, sometimes the long one, sometimes one that was lit around the end so they could sort of CGI it in, and sometimes it was full weight, sometimes not full weight.
"I chose the ones that had a full weight because I felt like when you wielded it, you had to see it, how it hits something. It was very, very important to me to have it be really believable. So, I had practiced at home, 'cause I also have a cape, to figure out the logistics of it with a broomstick."
Moff Gideon will be back in season three of The Mandalorian but he'll have to do without the Darksaber, so his trusty broomstick won't be needed for a while.
Of course Mando hasn't fully mastered the Darksaber himself and Gideon will probably be looking to get it back if the opportunity arises, so never say never as far as the prospect of Esposito wielding the iconic weapon again goes.
Esposito previously teased the prospect that Gideon might not be the true big bad of The Mandalorian, but that could just be him playing around with our expectations.
As for what we get out of the villainous remnant of The Empire, we'll just have to wait and see what the next season brings.
The Mandalorian season three premieres on Disney+ on 1 March.
Topics: Star Wars, The Mandalorian, Disney Plus, Film and TV
Joe Harker