Interview: Tait Fletcher | Paz Vizsla in Star Wars: The Mandalorian [ENGLISH]

Tait Fletcher spielte in Star Wars: The Mandalorian Alpha Trawler, blieb aber vor allem als Paz Vizsla in Erinnerung, obwohl er in dieser Rolle fortwährend Helm trägt. Während der Comic Con Prague 2024 hatte ich die Gelegenheit, mich mit ihm über seine Mitwirken an Star Wars: The Mandalorian und seine zukünftigen Projekte im Rahmen eines Interviews zu unterhalten.

Eine deutsche Übersetzung des Interviews findet ihr HIER.

Vorsicht: Das Interview enthält Spoiler zu Star Wars: The Mandalorian Staffel 3.

How are you today?

I am good, good. How are you guys?

Great, thank you. Are you having fun at the convention?

I love them. Especially internationally. It’s like to be plugged out of your comfort zone of language and of sights. You are not able to be interactive and of help. You know you have to rely on the kindness of strangers to just get down the street or anything. So, yeah, it’s wonderful.

What is it like to be on a Star Wars show like the Mandalorian?

It’s like work. I try to remove myself from it, so that I am not caught up in the grandeur of it. And I come to try to do the best job ever. But what it is for me in a big way is how huge Star Wars is for me and Chewbacca was my favorite. Always. He is my number one.

Emily Swallow, the Armorer, she is my number two and then maybe mine or Katee Sackhoff’s [Bo-Katan]. That’s kind of the order of things for me, but I knew that I had to carry it strongly. That’s what I knew about it.

This was an important show, it was important for people and is important generationally. It is one of the longest running dramas that we have going on that is really like a live theater. It’s the Star Wars legacy and I am just really proud to be a part of it.

It was amazing to be … You asked what it was like to be on the show. It is like being in a master class. You have Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, Carl Weathers. You have these people who are icons in the genre of film.

How did you prepare for the role then, for being on a Star Wars show as well as for the part wearing the armor and everything?

For me it was a lot of interaction, because having armor on I wasn’t used to. So you don’t know how much tilting your head offers to somebody else. You don’t know if the articulation of your body is too much or whatever. The suits are pressive. It’s very strong and it’s bungeed from your torso to your hips, from your hips to your knees, from your knees to your ankles.

So you are having to stand up. So this thing is pulling you down and how do you look strong and intentional with it? I wanted to bring back to the character – I never wanted him to seem cowered or beaten. I just wanted to bring that strength to him. What I did to prepare was … My whole life …

Of course.

My whole life before that is the reason I am the guy for the job I think.

You have been on many different kind of productions, on big budget productions as well as lower budget productions. Would you compare The Mandalorian more to a „normal“ TV show or is it more like a big blockbuster production, like „Wow, this is absolutely huge“?

Disney and Lucasfilm are multi-billion dollar corporations. You are not working for people. You are working for an entity. And it’s cool to have that experience and to that. They can do whatever they want. They can color anything any way they want. They can be unforgiving in that way, too, but the best thing and the thing I like about the people I work with is where they came from.

Jon [Favreau] did Swingers back in the day. They came as creatives that wrote themselves into the business. In this age in this business you need to be in creation and so I encourage just everybody to be in creation of writing, of drawing, of whatever it is. Make it your own and own it, because otherwise you’ll be taken and trampeled.

And so like best productions that I’ve done and the most fun I’ve had was since a couple of friends have written stories and we filmed those. We have Killer Kafé that is a story that one of my partners I used to fight Mixed Martial Arts with and my best training partner, he wrote and directed this film that we put together in this last December. And that is incredibly exhilarating, because we own that film and that’s our heart and our blood in it and our characters that we discovered and wrote and something like that is the best.

Were you aware of how popular the Mandalorians had been when you joined the show, because they had already been in those Legends stories of course and then you had Jango Fett, Boba Fett, the Mandalorians from the Clone Wars, etc.

To me the most interesting characters are … the same way probably Favreau saw it when he was a younger man. He sees Boba Fett and he is like there for 40 seconds or something. He is there for nothing. And he’s like „That’s a cool motherfucker!“

So when I first got the job I first play Alpha Trawler, that opens the whole season, right? And that was in the trailer. It was the 90 seconds that opened up The Mandalorian on Disney+ streaming and all my friends that opened [the trailer] – they showed it on Monday night football at the half time show – and all my friends they were like – cause I’ve been in the stunt world obviously all these pro football players were all texting me. I was at a fight with my girlfriend and they were texting me and was like getting 35 texts „I just saw you on the Super Bowl.“ And I was like: „And I didn’t even play the game“. That was like: Woah this is huge. I didn’t really have an idea of what that really would be like. But the enormity of it, it has just not landed on my. It’s a job that I did and I hope I did it well and people received it well.

Yeah, it is an important role and I think people really like it.

At first I thought I was Boba Fett, because I go into Legacy Effects and they start to measure everything and build around me and half an hour later they come and have this matte black helmet. And I am „Holy fuck, am I Boba Fett right now?“

And they were: „Well, we’ll see, we don’t know.“ And nobody really knew. There is such secrecy around it. So it was cool to be part of the evolution of it.

So, of course, with the helmet, no one can see your face and this would open up future opportunities in the Star Wars universe. Which other character would you love to play if you had the chance to?

Are you familiar with The Bad Batch?

Yes.

Yeah, I think Wrecker is a good fit. I think, that would be cool going forward. Or I think being a Jedi of any kind would be dope. That’s a real dream wish.

And last question: What are your upcoming projects? What can your fans look forward to?

I got a couple of horror things coming out, like I said a slasher film with my buddy. It’s almost kind of Hitchcocky and called Killer Kafé. I just did a thing with Katy O’Brian called Love Lies Bleeding. It is out now.

There are some upcoming things that I can’t speak about yet, that we are going to film in the next month and a half, which I am really excited about. Which I am most excited about is to keep moving forward.

The thing I am most excited about, I am really looking forward to do, is I am doing a documentary on brain injuries and on remediation of brain injuries and the different protocols, because in America anyway we love to feed fucking war and so guys run into explosions all the time and this gives horrific brain injuries. They come back, kill themselves – about 20 a day kill themselves. I come from combat athletics and the guys kill themselves all the time. Or in wrestling, football, soccer or anything with brain concussion and it’s something hard to recover from.

I’d like to put their word out. There are protocols what to do, because Western medicine doesn’t help you and we can’t get to remediate. So that’s another pet project I’ll be doing inbetween these things and try to get the word out.

That’s a really good project. Thank you for taking the time.

Thank you.