Fresh Air - Best Of: The Innovation Of 'I Love Lucy' / Mark Hamill

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

Playing Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy, made Desi Arnaz a star. Behind the scenes, he created what became standard procedures for producing, shooting, lighting and broadcasting TV sitcoms. Author Todd Purdum talks about his new book Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television. Also, we hear from Mark Hamill. He's in the new movie The Life of Chuck and is known for playing the iconic hero Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies. He talks about auditioning for the film and acting with puppets. Plus, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new HBO documentary, Pee-Wee as Himself.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Ira Glass with This American Life. Each week on our show, we choose a theme, tell different stories on that theme. I'm just going to stop right there. You're listening to an NPR podcast, chances are you know our show. So instead, I'm going to tell you, we've just been on a run of really good shows lately.

Some big epic emotional stories, some weird funny stuff too. Download us, This American Life. From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Lucy, I'm home. Playing Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy made Desi Arnaz a star.

Behind the scenes, he created what became standard procedures for producing, shooting, lighting, and broadcasting TV sitcoms. Today, author Todd Perdom talks about his new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television. Also we hear from Mark Hamill. He's in the new movie, The Life of Chuck, and is known for playing the iconic hero, Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies. When George Luke is cast in for the first movie, Hamill wasn't sure what to make of the script, so he turned

to his co-star for help. Plus, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new HBO documentary Pee-wee as himself. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate. No markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Our first interview today is with Terry Gross and Todd Perdom, author of the new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television. Lucy, I'm home. That's a phrase Desi Arnaz was known for in the sitcom I Love Lucy. That was one of his signature songs. The conga was the rhythm he helped popularize in the US, beating out on his conga drum as

people danced to the beat of 1, two, three, kick. Arnaz's movie career didn't go far, but playing Ricky Ricardo, husband of Lucille Ball's character Lucy Ricardo, made him a star. Just getting a major TV role was quite a feat because networks and sponsors were skeptical that a Cuban refugee with an accent would be accepted by American viewers. I Love Lucy premiered in 1951 when TV was young and ended its run of new shows in 1957. It became the first show in TV history to reach 10 million people. For years it was the most popular show on TV. A lot of that is credited to Ball's comedic talent and to the

work Arnaz did in front of the camera and behind the scenes, creating what became standard procedures for producing, shooting, lighting, and broadcasting TV sitcoms and led to the possibility of reruns and syndication. He also founded Desilu Productions, which kept expanding and for a while was the largest creator of TV content in the world. Armis Brooks, December Bride, the Andy Griffith show, The Untouchables, and the Dick Van Dyke show were among the programs produced by Desilu and or filmed in its studios. The new book Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television by my guest Todd Purdom is about Arnaz, I Love Lucy, the early days of TV, the seminal role he played in shaping it, his marriage to Lucille Ball, and the excesses that did him in. Purdom spent 23 years at the New York Times where he covered the White House, was

diplomatic correspondent, and LA bureau chief. He's the author of the previous books, Something Wonderful, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution, and An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Two Presidents, Two Parties, and The Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I Love Lucy is still part of current pop culture. It continues to play in reruns on TV. Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem starred as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in the 2021 film Being the Ricardos. In 2022, Amy Poehler directed the documentary Lucy and Desi. Todd Perdom, welcome back to Fresh Air. I really enjoyed the book. It has so much interesting TV history in it. Networks and sponsors were not enthusiastic about the idea of a Latino man starring in a sitcom. What were their problems? Well no, Terry, they weren't.

First of all, they were very concerned that he was different, that he had a thick accent, and they just did not believe that widespread American audiences would believe him as the husband of an all-American girl like Lucille Ball. Of course, the irony is they had been an all-american couple for ten years already in real life. How had he been typed in his earlier years in the movies? He said at one point his ambition was to be the Cuban Mickey Rooney and he really was a little bit like Mickey Rooney. He could do comedy, he could do music, he could play the drum, he could sing and he struggled to find a workable niche in Hollywood. He was always a little bit off.

He never quite fit into Hollywood's stereotype of what a Latin performer should be. He'd been a successful bandleader. Yes, and he was apparently in person a very, very compelling entertainer, a wonderful showman who had a, could hold the audience in the palm of his hand. He wasn't a classically great musician. He was self-taught.

He never learned how to read music. He wasn't a spectacular drummer. His Latin music, his Cuban music was by the lights of authentic Cuban music fans, not the most pure version. It was a kind of popularized American version that brought those Cuban musical forms to American mass audiences But apparently the whole package was pretty overwhelming when you saw him in the flesh He wasn't a great singer either. I'll add that and a lot of his songs were novelty songs. Yes He was an adequate singer, but he was you know, he was not a

Incredible vocalist there's no doubt about that. Meanwhile, Lucille Ball wasn't getting like the traction that she wanted in movies either. No, she'd been working steadily in movies since 1933. This is 1950, 51 when they're trying to get the show on the air. She was approaching the age of 40, which then as now was a very dangerous age for a female actress in Hollywood. She had worked steadily, but she'd never really broken

through as a major A-list star, and she was beginning to be known as the queen of the B's, the second-tier movies that rounded out double features. So at the point that I Love Lucy is about to begin, she was starring in a radio sitcom called My Favorite Husband. Now that TV was beginning to catch on, the network thought we should transfer it to TV and make it a TV sitcom.

And that's not what she really wanted to do. She wanted herself and Desi, who was her husband by then, to have their own sitcom. So talk about how they made the deal to co-star in a new TV series. Yes, what happened was she was in the last gasp of really big network radio. It was a sitcom about a zany wife and her fifth vice president of a bank husband called

my favorite husband. And CBS realized that television was catching on and the Lucy show had been successful, so they wanted to transfer to TV. And the only way she was willing to do it is if Desi played her husband. But he himself realized he could not plausibly be the fifth vice president of a bank Richard Denning who was the actor who played her husband on the air was a blonde waspy Judged kind of actor so they they were struggling to have a different concept and and one that's CBS

Which was running my favorite husband would accept Desi said, I have an idea. We'll go on a vaudeville tour. We'll take my band on a tour of movie houses around the country and big cities. And you can perform comedy. And we'll perform comedy and music together and prove to the suits at the network that the public will accept us as a team.

And in the summer of 1950, that's what they did. And it was a spectacular success all over the country. And finally, CBS and the sponsor, Philip Morris, agreed. And Philip Morris, of course, was a very big cigarette manufacturer. And the sponsors were so influential at that time. Their name was even in the title of some shows. What I love is, and I didn't know this

till reading your book, that the opening credits in the original broadcast, not the reruns, not in syndication, but in the original broadcast, one you describe what the opening was like. It wasn't the heart logo with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, I love Lucy. It was completely different. No, they were these charming little animated stick figures drawn by the Hanna-Barbera animation team, the people who created Tom and Jerry, the cat and mouse. And Lucy and Desi were frolicking on top of a package of cigarettes and dancing around as the show began.

The velvety-looking heart logo only came later in reruns. So at the time, TV shows were mostly live or on kinescopes. Why don't you explain what a kinescope is? Well in 1950-51, television was almost completely a live medium and it was centered almost completely in New York because it was dominated by the advertising agencies who were there. The challenge for broadcasting across the whole country was it wasn't yet possible to beam a television signal all the way from New York to California.

So if a show was produced in New York, it was seen live in the eastern 2 thirds or so of the country to around maybe St. Louis, Kansas City, something like that. And then in order to broadcast it in the West Coast, they had to film using 16 millimeter film off a television monitor and they produced a very poor duplicate called a kinescope that video tape had not yet been invented. So the problem was shows that were produced in

one place and shown in another had a very poor visual quality. One of the challenges that you can't even now you'll notice probably sometimes if you watch a movie and a television screen appears in the background, it vibrates and has a kind of a jiggly moiré quality because the speed of film is different from the speed of the video image. Digital has changed some of this. But in any case, Lucy and Desi,

the whole goal of the show was to work together, live in Los Angeles where they were about ready to have their first child, their daughter, Lucy Desiree Arnaz, and the sponsor and CBS wanted them to come and do it in New York and they said no, no, no, we don't want to do that. And and that's when CBS said well, we're certainly not going to have you do it live in Los Angeles and make the most important markets in the country watch a blurry kinescope. So you'll have to film it and that will cost more.

So what was Desi Arnaz a solution to getting around the fact that you couldn't really broadcast from coast to coast and Kinescopes looked really terrible His basic idea was let's film it on 35 millimeter film stock just like a movie 35mm film stock, just like a movie. But because CBS and the sponsor also realized that Lucy performed best in front of a live audience as her radio show had demonstrated, they wanted to film this television program also in front of a live audience. Well, as you probably know, a movie is filmed most of the time with a single camera set up over and over again for each shot.

Every close-up, every reaction, it involves a separate camera set up over and over again for each shot, every close-up, every reaction, it involves a separate camera set up. And to try to film a half-hour situation comedy like that would have been in those days very cumbersome. It would have also wrecked the spontaneity. It would have been complicated to capture the laugh and reaction. So they came up with this notion of using three cameras at once in synchronicity, filming the show like a play. And while a game show, the Ralph Edwards' Truth or Consequences had been experimenting with that technique, no

one had ever really done it for a play, you know, like a sitcom. So, Desi went around talking to various cinematographers, including the Academy Award-winning cameraman Karl Freund, who had started out in German Expressionist Cinema in the 20s and 30s and come to Hollywood like so many emigres from Europe, and he said, you can't do it. And Desi said, why? He said, because you have to light separately for the close-ups, for the medium shots, for the long shots, and then as a sheer intellectual challenge, Freund said, but let me see if we can figure something out. So he devised an innovative system

of so-called flat overhead lighting that would light the set adequately for all three camera angles at once. And then, because a motion picture studio is a working factory floor with all kinds of dangerous cables and electricity and fire hazards, they had to figure out a way to get an audience in there to watch it.

So they built a set of wooden and metal bleachers, had about 300 people come into this soundstage. They had to cut a special door in the street side of the soundstage so that people could have adequate fire exit. And that became the method that with a few changes is still used today, was used for shows like Friends, The Big Bang Theory. Most sitcoms today are still shot using this same basic technique. We're listening to Terry's interview with Todd Perdom. His new book is Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television. We'll hear more of their conversation after a short break.

I'm Sam Brigger and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Let's get back to Terry Gross's interview with Todd Perdom. His new book, Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television, is about Arnaz, his on and off-screen wife Lucille Ball, their show I Love Lucy, and how Arnaz's innovations and his studio helped shape the early days of television. So when Lucille Ballon d'Aziz Arnaz shot the pilot, which was basically an audition for them,

she was pregnant and wore baggy clothes to cover it up because she couldn't look pregnant on TV. And then later in the series, she was actually pregnant again with their son. And the writers and Lucille Ballon d'Aziz Arnaz wanted to write that into the story of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, but the network was against it. Why was showing a pregnant woman so taboo?

Like a pregnant actress playing a pregnant character, why was that so taboo? Well, because television in those days was a bland, sponsor-driven mass medium that to some degree the way it does now, except it depended on the most innocuous fair to offend the fewest number of people. And if you had a pregnant woman on the air, especially a really pregnant actress, it would betray the way that you get pregnant, which is by having sex.

And sex did not really appear on television in those days. So Lucy and Desi fought hard with CBS to do this. And they thought, Desi particularly thought, there could be a whole series, and the head writer and producer, Jess Oppenheimer, thought there could be a series of very tasteful, very charming episodes that would show what happens when people have a baby. And finally, ultimately, Desi only found out a couple years later. He'd

gone over the heads of the network executives to the chairman of Philip Morris and written him a letter saying, we've given you the number one show on television. If you don't want us to be responsible for writing it anymore, then you'll have to figure out how to get the number one show on television and we can't be responsible anymore. And he later learned that the chairman of the company had sent a memo to his staff, basically saying in the very pungent terms that I'm not going to say on the radio, don't mess around with the Cuban. So they were allowed to do the episodes.

And they were so concerned about doing it in good taste that they hired a tripartite panel of a priest, a rabbi, and a Protestant minister to vet the scripts and be on the set when they were filming to make sure that everything was done in good taste. It's so ridiculous. It's incredible. It's incredible. And also sitcom families, I mean, the idea was they're typically supposed to have children and be like an average, quote, normal nuclear family, a husband and wife and kids.

And so, like, you can't have kids without being pregnant. It's just so absurd. Anyhow. Well, in future years, Desi recalled in a years later interview with David Letterman how you couldn't say the word pregnant on television. You couldn't say pregnant? No.

So he said in his wonderful accent, had to say, spectrum. And the audience in David Letterman's show laughed out loud, of course. And Desi took a beat in a classic deadpan, you know, and then said, spectrum was better anyway. And Letterman's like, it still is, because you can't get a laugh with the word pregnant, whereas, you know, spectrum is pretty funny.

I want to skip ahead to an episode of I Love Lucy in which she's just found out she's pregnant. She because she's really wanted to have a baby. She is just glowing and Ricky is about to come home. So she's always imagined what it was gonna be like to tell her husband we're gonna have a baby. She's gonna make him a nice meal, put her arms around him and deliver the news. It's gonna be romantic and perfect. So she makes him a, you know, a great lunch, puts it on the table in the living room. He comes in. He's had a terrible day. He's in a really foul mood and he's very, very hungry and all he wants to do is eat. So I want to play that scene.

Ricky, do you have to eat now? Well, honey, it's lunch time. You fixed me a beautiful lunch. Well, stop for a minute. Now swallow that. My stomach is going to think I lost my teeth. All right, honey. Now, what is it? Ricky, darling. RINGTONE Honey, the phone is ringing.

I know it. Well, honey, one of us has to get up and answer it. No! Lucy? Let it ring. Honey, come on, it might be important. Oh! RINGTONE Hello? Oh, hello, Marco. What?

What do you mean they can't have the costumes there till tonight? Now, look, you tell that guy that he has to have those costumes there by 2 o'clock this afternoon or I'm gonna sue him. That's what I said. I'm gonna sue him. Thanks. Goodbye. Oh, what a business.

Sometimes I think I go back to Q and work in a sugar plantation. Just the two of us. Just the two of us? Yeah. I don't mind to get you all involved in my affairs, honey, but you should be happy you're a woman. Oh, I am, I am.

Well, you think that you know how tough my job is, but believe me, if you traded places with me, you'd be surprised. Believe me, if I traded places with you, you'd be surprised. One of the things I like about this scene is the difference between the fantasy you imagine and the reality that you get. But Lucille Bowe, I think, was very pregnant at the time because she's wearing what really looks like maternity clothes. Do you know how pregnant she was? How expectant she was when they shot that?

She probably would have been approaching, like, five months or something. And one of the things, apparently, about her pregnancies, she showed early and large in her pregnancy. She tended to balloon up, which is why they couldn't hide the pregnancy. They would have had to stop producing the show if they couldn't have pregnancy be part of the plot. And so, of course, the episode then continues from that wonderful scene you just played. She finally goes down to the nightclub and devises

a ruse to tell him they're in public. And it's a charming scene when they, when he realizes that he's gonna have a, he's gonna be the father. And this is set at a nightclub where he's the bandleader. And he gets a note saying there's a couple here who is going to have a baby. And he asks like, well, who is it? And nobody raises their hand or stands up.

So he goes from table to table, basically saying, is it you, is it you? And then he realizes Lucy is there and he realizes they're gonna have a baby. And then he sings this song. We're having a baby, my baby and me. You'll read it in Winshell that we're adding a limb to our family tree While pushing that carriage, how proud I will be There's nothing like marriage, ask your father and mother and they'll agree He'll have toys, baby clothes.

He'll know he's come to the right house. Bye-bye, when he grows. Maybe he'll live in the White House. And why not? So that's an example, too, of how they worked the fact that Ricky Ricardo was a bandleader in a nightclub into the story. The show and they were meta before meta was meta.

You know, and the synergy of their real life relationship, the relationship on the show, it all played into each other and the episode in which the baby was born on television had been filmed weeks before the baby was born in real life. And then because Lucy had had a C-section with her first child, in those days, if you'd ever had a cesarean section, you had a cesarean section for all subsequent children.

So her surgeon happened to do his operations on a Monday. So she pre-scheduled the birth of the real life, Desi Jr., for Monday morning. So Desi Jr. was born on Monday morning in real life at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles. And that night on the air, millions of Americans saw little Ricky born on the air. But they weren't actually happening in real time.

Did they send out press releases explaining that both happened on the same day? Yes, well, Jim Bacon, the Associated Press Reporter, was sitting with Jesse outside the delivery room. And within seconds of the word that the baby, the real lifelife baby had been born, the news was flashing all over the world and was worldwide headlines in Japan and Europe and every place in the world. And that's really important because they were so afraid to have a pregnant character on TV even though the actress was pregnant too and it turned

out to be a real boom for the show. Absolutely and I think it's also another proof Terry that the public is so often ahead of the leadership in these kinds of questions. People prove totally capable of accepting the fact that these people had a baby without being horrified. What was Lucille Boal and Desi Arnaz's relationship like on and off the set? It seemed pretty tumultuous both on and off the set.

I think it was. From the moment they met each other, it was a classic case of love at first sight or, you know, a very powerful attraction. They got married within six months of meeting each other. They were each pretty seriously involved with other people when they met and they promptly dumped those other people and saw only each other. The problem was from the very beginning that Desi had an idea that he could stray sexually and it shouldn't matter to his wife because his wife was his wife and that's all that mattered. Can I stop you there? I mean he learned that from his father and grandfather in Cuba who both had mistresses and he was introduced to what was then called a

prostitute and is now called a sex worker when he was 15 to initiate him. Yes, his uncle took him to the fanciest bordello in Santiago de Cuba, his hometown, and introduced him to sex in a bordello. And when he came to New York as a young performer, he frequented a Polly Adler's bordello, which was the most elegant whorehouse in New York,

basically, that had the cream of entertainment and society clientele. And Desi, I think he would clearly be what we now would think of as a sex addict. He didn't have affairs with people, as his daughter once said to me, with people who had last names. He just had endless dalliances with prostitutes, sometimes

more than one at a time. And when this was semi-private, it bothered Lucy, but she could tolerate it. When it became increasingly public and he ultimately got arrested weaving down the street in Hollywood in a neighborhood of notorious bordellos, it became humiliating for Lucy, and she really just couldn't take it anymore.

And that's ultimately what that and his drinking is what led to their divorce in 1960. Todd Purdom, it's been a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you, Terri. It's a pleasure to be here. Todd Purdom is the author of the new book Desi Arnaz, The Man Who Invented Television. Paul Rubens, the actor best known for his alter ego Pee-wee Herman, died in 2023 after a private six-year battle with cancer. Near the end of his life, Rubens collaborated on a documentary, sitting for 40 hours of intimate interviews with director Matt Wolfe.

The result of that effort is the two-part HBO documentary Pee-wee As Himself. TV critic David Bianculli has this review. When Paul Rubin speaks directly to the camera in Pee Wee as himself, framed tightly by the lens and looking frail but still feisty, it's as though he's delivering his last will and testament. And he says as much. This is such a dumb thing to say, but you know, death is just so final, you know, that to be able to like get your message in at the last minute or at some point is incredible. So what is his message in this new documentary?

On one level, Rubin sets out to explain his artistic process and the inspirations and motivations behind the character of Pee Wee Herman. On another level he explores what he gained and lost by refusing to be seen or interviewed as himself for the whole time Pee Wee was starring in movies or television. And most delicately and intriguingly Paul Rub Rubens provides his point of view about things that rarely were discussed by him during his lifetime, from his private life and sexuality to his infamous arrest on charges of public indecency. In covering all this ground, Rubens opens up his Pack Rat archive of personal photos

and home movies. Director Matt Wolfe interviews other people as well, such as Lorraine Newman, who worked and director's Tim Burton and Judd Apatow, and several actors who appeared in the long-running CBS children's series Pee-Wee's Playhouse, including Laurence Fishburne, Natasha Lyonne, and Esa Patha-Merkerson. By the time Rubens took his Pee-Wee character to Saturday Morning TV and was on the show, he was already a very famous actor. He was a very famous actor,

and he was a very famous actor, and Esa Patha Merkerson. By the time Rubens took his Pee-wee character to Saturday Morning TV in 1986, he says he knew exactly what he wanted to do. And Merkerson says she appreciated it. I just felt right from the get-go, something that I could do that could be very important and very subliminal would be to just make the show

very inclusive and not comment on it in any way. Captain Kangaroo, Suppy Sails, Howdy Doody, you know, none of those shows did I see myself reflected. So that I had the opportunity to be a part of a show that young black kids would see and go, oh, there's an image of me here. That means a lot to me. The Road to Pee-wee's Playhouse, an utterly brilliant TV show, is relayed by Pee-wee's alter ego in bursts of quick but clear developmental insights. The shows he watched as a kid.

I was absolutely transformed in such a strong way by so many things in early television. I wanted to jump into my TV and live in that world. Say kids, what time is it? 5! My favorite kids' shows were absolutely like Howdy Duty, Captain Kangaroo, and the Mickey Mouse Club. His inspirations for the name Pee-wee Herman... I had a little harmonica, a little tiny harmonica this big that said Pee-wee on it.

And I thought, Pee-wee... And I knew this kid when I was little who was like this crazy, like really loud and nutty kid, and his last name was Herman. And I thought, Pee-wee Herman sounds so weird that it sounds real. It just didn't sound like a made-up name at all like Cary Grant or like Rock Hudson or like a made-up name. It sounded Pee Wee Herman like if you were making up a name wouldn't you make up a better name than that? And noting the meteoric rise

of Pee Wee from an improv bit at the Groundlings to the star of his own stage show, movie and TV series, his view of the effects of stardom on his own carefully cultivated privacy. If I was conflicted about sexuality, fame was so much more complicated. By the time I realized that you trade in anonymity and privacy for success, the ink had dried on my pack with the devil. All of that imploded in 1991 after an event reported by CBS anchor Dan Rather. In Sarasota, Florida, actor Paul Rubins, better known as TV's Pee-wee Herman, is free on Dan Rather. Paul Rubens addresses all of this frankly, taking great pains to explain his point of

view. Yet that's not the most compelling or illuminating part of this documentary. The part that reveals the most, especially about Paul Rubens as an artist and a person, is his constant tug-of-war with the documentary's director, Matt Wolfe. At times, Rubens is goofing around during the interviews and being coy. At times, Rubens is goofing around during the interviews and being coy. Other times, he tells Wolf he doesn't trust him and would rather get his message out himself without Wolf's editorial interference. Peewee as himself makes clear that Paul Rubens was a control freak of sorts. And at the end, Rubens finally gets in the last word, unfiltered.

It's worth hearing. And, for this HBO documentary, it's just the right coda. David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new HBO documentary, Pee Wee as Himself. Coming up, we hear from actor Mark Hamill, best known for playing Luke Skywalker. He's in the new movie The Life of Chuck, which was adapted from a Stephen King story. I'm Sam Brigger and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Our next guest today is actor Mark Hamill. He's in the new movie The Life of Chuck by director Mike Flanagan, who adapted the movie

from a Stephen King story. You might be surprised to hear that the film is not a horror movie. Flanagan's best known for horror films, and Stephen King is, well, Stephen King. If it is horror, the life of Chuck is of the existential kind, asking questions like are the length of our lives predetermined by supernatural forces? Does fate control us? Are we actually the product of someone else's imagination? Mark Hamill plays Chuck's grandfather, Albie, a hard-drinking accountant, a kind man, but haunted by his secrets. When you hear Mark Hamill's name, it's hard not to think of an epic story that took place

a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, as Hamill played one of the most iconic heroes in movie history, Luke Skywalker in the 1977 film Star Wars, a movie that changed Hollywood and the larger culture. Hamill was Luke in the original trilogy and reprised the role in the last trilogy that began in 2015. Hamill's other big recurring role, one that he had for three decades, was as a villain. He was the Joker in Batman the Animated Series, part of his long career as a voice actor. He said he would stop doing the voice of the Joker, though, when the actor who played Batman, Kevin Conroy, died in 2022.

This is not the first time Hamill has worked with the director of The Life of Chuck. He also appeared in Mike Flanagan's Netflix horror series, The Fall of the House of Usher, as a lawyer and fixer named Arthur Pym. Let's start with a clip from The Life of Chuck. Here, Albie is going over his grandson Chuck's math homework. Chuck lives with him since his parents died in a car accident. Chuck's good at math, but his passion is dancing, and Albie's about to give him some tough love.

Some math, math that's called statistics or probability, it can tell you stuff about your future. tough love. The world loves dancers, it truly does. But it needs accountants. So there's much more demand, so there's much more opportunity. I know that might hurt, but it's the truth. Math is truth. It won't lie to you. It doesn't factor in your preferences. It's pure that way.

Math can do a lot of things. Math can be art. But it can't lie. So take another run at those two, because, Chuck, you are good. You have art in you. That's a scene with Mark Hamill, our guest in the new movie, The Life of Chuck. Mark Hamill, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you, Sam.

So you've worked with Mike Flanagan before. Did he come to you asking you to play this role? What did he tell you about it? Well, I don't know. There was a phone call or an email saying, I'm doing a movie based on a Stephen King novella, and I think there's something that would be good for you. So I immediately ordered it on Amazon. It's in a collection called If It Bleeds. There's

three stories. I was expecting some sort of epic, supernatural, you know, horror epic. astonished at how atypical it was for Stephen King and how Mike had never done anything quite like this. So, you know, I mean, Stephen King has done Green Mile and The Body and Shawshank Retention. Right. He's pretty versatile, but nonetheless, he still is. Yes, exactly. They're both very versatile, but you just assume that the two of them together, that's what they would come up with. But I mean, I was delighted. I started reading this thing, and it's told in reverse order, as you say. And I had to tell the producers, I said, you know, I don't know how well I'm gonna do when I'm supposed to go out and promote this thing, because how do you describe the indescribable? My advice to people is to just go. Go unprepared. Don't read reviews, because there are elements that you recognize from Stephen King, you know, apocalyptic themes,

a haunted room, but that's not the focus of the picture. It's about the impact on one person's life. And I don't know, just the nature of living. The movie itself might be indescribable, but one thing that is describable is the mustache you have in this movie, which is like a Wilfred Brimley soup straining Walrus kind of mustache.

So is that yours? Did you grow that thing? Yes, yes, I grew that thing and when I found out I was going to do it, I just stopped trimming it. And when I sat down, you know, makeup and hair are critical collaborators, makeup, hair, and wardrobe. And I said, just take all the color out of my hair. I want to have white hair. And they whitened out the mustache.

And when I selected the rimless glasses and put them on, I looked in the mirror and went, oh my god, I'm Geppetto. I looked just like the Disney version of Geppetto and Pinocchio. But that's okay. We just listened to this clip and what the listeners aren't seeing is how the speech is going over with the young Chuck and his eyes are as big as saucers. I mean, it's a nice speech you're making, but you are basically kind of crushing his dreams. You're like, don't be a dancer, be an accountant. Did you ever get-

I can relate to that. Well, I was wondering, did you ever get that version of that speech when you were young and full of acting ambitions? Are you kidding? Yeah, I'm the middle of seven children, career naval officer, and they thought I was nuts. They said, you can't be in show business. We don't

know anybody in show business. We don't know anybody who knows anybody. It's just ridiculous. You got to get your degree so you could be a teacher. You could teach drama. No, I wasn't encouraged at all until my senior year in high school. My father got transferred to Japan. I went to Yokohama High School. And the drama teacher recognized my passion because I had, for the first time, gone to Broadway and seen several Broadway shows. I tagged along with my father on a business trip. We were living in Virginia when he went to New York twice. I went and saw Broadway shows. And see, the thing is, I knew in my soul very early on, I mean, like grade school, that I wanted to be in this business. I didn't know if I was going to be an actor, but the two examples I always remember are seeing the original black and white King Kong and

just being blown away, not knowing how they made dinosaurs come to life. I just thought, somebody goes to work and makes these things happen. I want a job where I bring a gorilla and dinosaurs to life. If I can't do it myself, I could certainly be an assistant. So I was really into that. And there was a Walt Disney program that had Clarence Nash, this distinguished gentleman with white hair, step up to the microphone,

and he was the voice of Donald Duck. Now, I was probably either in kindergarten or first grade when I saw that, it never occurred to me, well, of course, there's got to be people doing the voices of Daffy, Duck, and Bullwinkle, and all of that. And it really motivated me. I mean, I went to the, when I go to record stores, I go to the children's album section and look on the back of, say, a Rocky and Bullwinkle album, I go, oh, Paul Freeze, June Farré, Dawes Butler, you know, that. So you were doing research on the people. Yes, yes, because I thought, wow, I would love to be in that business.

Now, the Walt Disney program was the only one on television that showed you behind the scenes how movies were made. So it made it much more real to me. You saw the camera crew and the construction work and the wardrobe and the caterers. So I mean, as much as I was discouraged, I thought, you know, well, I'm not a bad cook. If I can't be a director or an actor, I could always cater the... You'll get there some way.

Yeah, I'll get there some way. Because I don't have to be in the show, but I want to be near the show. Now, mind you, this is all kept to myself, because I had four sisters and two brothers that would have ridiculed me endlessly if I had been forthcoming about my intentions. But I was always that kind of drawn that way.

I loved, I put on puppet shows. I had a Jerry Mahoney ventriloquist dummy. Oh, yes. That was instructional in and of itself. I hosted a talent show in the sixth grade with my dummy. And as most people realize, you don't have to take responsibility for anything the dummy says. So you could be highly critical of teachers and the cafeteria food, or you just say outrageous things and blame it on the dummy. And it was very empowering to get laughter. I realized this is what I want to do. I like being up in front of people and I love getting laughter. Mark, I thought we would start this part of the conversation with a cameo you did on The Simpsons. You're appearing, I think it's a comic convention. You come out of a spaceship

dressed like Luke Skywalker and with a lightsaber you knock over a bunch of cardboard cutouts of Stormtroopers and also Wonder Woman for some reason. Let's hear the clip. Welcome futurists, cyber files, and the rest of you dateless wonders. And now to push this convention into hyperspace, the man who put the star in Star Wars, a real bear under Darth Vader's saddle, Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill! Hey, thanks everybody.

You know, I'm here today as Luke Skywalker, but I'm also here to talk about Sprint. As you can see, you stand to save up to 17 cents a month over the more dependable providers. I talk about Star Wars! You stupid nerds! He's trying to save you money in long distance! Now, I got a call from my agent because I've got good news and bad news. The good news is they want you on The Simpsons, which I adored at the time and was dying to get on. The bad news is you're playing yourself. No. Because that's the rub. I've done things like,

they asked me to be on Big Bang Theory, and I thought, oh, good, I could play like, I don't know, Leonard's father or, you know, somebody integrated into the series that you hadn't seen. And they said, no, they want you to play yourself. Which is hard because you have to then think, well, wait a minute, who am I? I mean, when you're to then think, well, wait a minute, who am I? I mean, when you're playing a character, you don't have to take responsibility for anything that you say or do. Here, you'd have to say, would I really say that? Would I do... Anyway, it's not as much fun. But at least on

Simpsons, I said, guys, you got to let me do something else besides myself. And so they let me play, I think his name was LaVell, the, you lot are the loziest bunch of recruits I've ever seen. I was playing a southern police officer guy that was training these guys. I loved it, I mean, it was so much fun. Well, let's use this as a segue to talk about being Luke Skywalker a little bit. I think when you auditioned for Star Wars, you came in and didn't know what you were auditioning for, and you auditioned both for Carrie and Star Wars at the same time. Is that true? Yes.

The cattle call I eventually went to were actors from the ages of like 16 through 35 because they were looking at both Luke and Han Solo. There was no script. You just met with Brian De Palma who was casting Carrie and sitting right next to him was George who was casting Star Wars. And there was no information. I mean, they just said, tell us a little bit about yourself. And I did. And after a few minutes, they said, OK, thank you. I mean, it's what they call a cattle call, where there are hundreds of people there.

And you don't read for them. They don't talk about Carrie. They don't talk about Star Wars. They're just getting a feel for whether you're right for something. So I didn't get called back on Carrie, but I did get called back on Star Wars and eventually did a videotaped screen test. Harrison played Han Solo and we only got about eight pages. I didn't read the whole script until I was given the part. And that's something I'll never forget.

Sitting down and reading that script and knowing that I had been cast, and even without John Williams' music or the special effects or anything, it read like a dream. But it was hell at the audition because I'm trying to figure out. I said, Harrison, you worked with George on American Graffiti. Is this like a send-up? Is this like a parody of Flash Gordon? He's, hey, kid, let's just get it done. So he was no help whatsoever.

Same with George. George, I asked him the same questions. Is this like a Mel Brooks version, like a send-up? And he went, uh, well, let's just do it and we'll talk about it later. Translation is, let's just do it and we'll never talk about it later.

George doesn't want to talk about backstory or motivation or all that. I mean, he's a real movie maker in the sense that he only really comes alive in the editing room. He just wants to get on film whatever it is you're working on that particular day. He doesn't want to hear about backstory and all that stuff, that actor-y stuff. So you know, I imagine as an actor that an important part of your job is and something that helps you do your job is

like the feedback you receive from other actors in the scene, like from their energy, from their expressions, like you probably work off of each other. But for you, some of your most famous dramatic scenes in these Star Wars movies, you're acting opposite a puppet. And even though, you know, it's Frank Oz, great puppet master, like, was that difficult? Was it difficult to like stay in the moment when you're expressing yourself to Yoda, who is not a real person, of course? Look, Frank Oz is so good that when I looked at Yoda

and he was manipulating him, I totally believed he was real. I mean, a lot of times they would bury him out of sight underground, you know, he had an earpiece and I had an earpiece so I could hear what he was saying. But I just loved everything about Yoda, the talking backwards thing, and just all of it. And it was kind of lonely, because I think the most just pure-out fun I had working on the original trilogy was when Harrison, Carrie, and I were all on the Death Star running around. It was all three of us together.

It was so much fun. We enjoyed each other's company. Then in Empire, I go away. I mean, I don't even get to keep C-3PO. I keep R2, but I go off to Dagobah, and there would be separate call sheets. On the main call sheet was Kerry and Harrison, Peter Cushing, whoever it might be. And then on my call sheet, I was the only human being. It was actor Mark Hamill, role Luke, and then it was puppets, lizards, snakes.

It was all props. Well, Mark Hamill, thank you so much for coming on Fresh Air. Of course. Actor Mark Hamill, he's in the new movie on Fresh Air. Of course. Actor Mark Hamill. He's in the new movie, The Life of Chuck, which is adapted from a Stephen King story. ["Fresh Air Weekend"] Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Theresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Charlie Kyer. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne Marie Baldinado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C. V. Nesbitt. Our consulting video producer is Hope Wilson. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Sam Brigger.