Greedo actor details deleted shootout scene with Han Solo and stormtroopers
By Elaine Tveit
The actor who played Greedo the Rodian in Star Wars: A New Hope, Paul Blake, revealed in an interview the details of a deleted shootout scene with him, Han Solo and stormtroopers.
A Rodian, the species of Greedo, the alien Han Solo kills in the Cantina in A New Hope, originally appeared in a more violent scene in the film.
In an interview with Sci Fi Central, Greedo actor Paul Blake detailed a scene he shot with Harrison Ford and a host of stormtroopers (via Heroic Hollywood):
"“…that was a brilliant little sequence which I loved doing with Harrison, where we were shooting at each other like cowboys and Indians. We had this big gun battle which lasted all morning and then stormtroopers came out of the big double doors. We started firing at them.”"
Keep in mind that the Rodian Blake portrayed during this scene was probably not Greedo. There are actually two more Rodians in A New Hope, one of which, Blake says, he played. They appear in the scene where Han Solo is confronted by Jabba the Hutt and his cronies. That scene was added in the 1997 VHS edition of the film, and it takes place after Han shoots Greedo. If the shootout Blake describes happens right before Han, Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi take off in the Millennium Falcon, there is no way Greedo could be in it. The role would have to be filled by one of Jabba’s other Rodian lackeys.
One of the two other Rodians in
Star Wars: A New Hope
. Image Credit: Lucasfilm (screenshot and edit via photo library Elaine Tveit)
It would be hard to incorporate the shootout back into the story of A New Hope with Greedo as Han’s Rodian antagonist. The whole sequence would need to be moved to before Han Solo entered the Cantina and met Luke and Ben. Then, a convoluted explanation would be needed to explain why the stormtroopers in the shootout aren’t looking for Han or Greedo in the Cantina. If this scene ever comes back to light, then, it will be in a book or comic series in a totally different time and maybe even place.