Sources over at Making Star Wars continue their hard work to bring us information about the upcoming ‘The Mandalorian’ series, with the latest tidbits coming out seemingly leaking what role Nick Nolte will be playing.
According to these sources, the man will be playing an Ugnaught in the new series, one of the small, pig-like humanoids first scene in the ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ when the gang visits Lando Calrissian’s Cloud City on Bespin. And believe it or not, it will not be a CGI role, nor did the man have to wear any heavy make-up. According to these sources, part of the massive new, practical and inexpensive, but very high-tech special effects for the series includes a practical animatronic mask that works with voice-commands, that is supposed to be amazing to behold, and perfectly able to capture an actor’s performance. In fact, they say that due to this technology, supposedly Nolte was never even on set, recording all of his lines while on set for another production, in a linen closet of all places (if you believe it) over the course of a few hours. Of course, if he could record all of his lines in just a few hours there is a chance his role in the series is relatively small, or else a chance that the Ugnaught’s vocabulary is small enough that a handful of lines from Nolte is all they need to keep the little alien talking for the entire season.
Now I, personally, am taking a lot of this with a grain of salt, as it does sound a little far-fetched, though I would really like to believe that Lucasfilm and ILM developed this kind of tech and are using it to keep prices down for the series. But the idea that they managed to pull all of this off so quickly and used it for a cameo role for an actor like Nick Nolte just doesn’t sound right to me. But who knows? I could be mistaken. Or I could be right, and the whole thing could be a massive red-herring by Lucasfilm to throw off fans looking for leaks and inside information on the new series.
Feel free to share your thoughts on what it could be in the comments below!
