Joonas Suotamo recounts scrapped Chewbacca and Kylo Ren interrogation scene

Finnish actor Joonas Suotamo has a new memoir out about his life as an actor in Star Wars. The ex-Finnish basketball team player took over Peter Mayhew’s role as Chewbacca in the sequel trilogy, and now he has many stories to tell. The book has only been published in Finnish and is titled Roar! – Elämäni Wookieena, which roughly translates to Roar! My Life as a Wookiee. 

On Twitter, the account The Adam Driver Files has shared some stories from the book in English. And in one of those stories, Suotamo recalled how he and Kylo Ren actor Adam Driver filmed a now-scrapped interrogation scene between their two characters in The Rise of Skywalker. The tweets (as found by the Star Wars Leaks subreddit) detailed how intense it was for Suotamo to film the scene, seeing as it involved Kylo Ren torturing Chewbacca.

Here’s what the account tweeted in its thread about the scene:

"NEW excerpt: My Life as a Wookiee (translation from Finnish)-Joonas describes torture scene that was filmed as very intense & very tough for him both as Chewie’s actor & also mentally because Adam had “psyched himself to be a real monster through it all, w/ the cameras on or off”Adam didn’t talk at all during breaks, even though at this point the actors were otherwise friends. Joonas says Adam was so convincing in the deleted torture scene that he was at times actually scared & he believes the scene might have turned out too dark for the film.“Perhaps the transformation of Kylo Ren into Ben Solo would also have suffered with such an inhumane act that some viewers would see it as unforgivable even though he ended up saving the entire galaxy.”"

What happened to Chewbacca in The Rise of Skywalker?

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In The Rise of Skywalker final cut, there’s a scene where Chewbacca is captured on Pasaana and then taken away in one of the First Order transports. Despite Rey thinking that she’s blown up the transport with Chewbacca in it, he’s still alive and was brought aboard a First Order ship. We only see him a few scenes later when Finn and Poe come to rescue him from being held captive on the ship.

But what happens in between those scenes seems to be what Suotamo was referring to. If you click on the link to the Twitter thread or the subreddit, you’ll see that there was even some concept art to go along with this scene. So, why was it left out?

First and foremost, the interrogation scene seems so intense that perhaps it wasn’t fit for audiences. Yes, mature audiences may have been able to handle it. But for the younger people who watch the movie, you wouldn’t necessarily want to see a friendly Wookiee like Chewbacca be tortured to no end.

The interrogation scene with Rey in The Force Awakens was fitting, seeing as Kylo Ren was only playing mind games and Rey had the ability to defend herself against those games. But while Chewbacca is bold and brave, there’s no way he could have Force-blocked torture from Kylo Ren.

Second, of course, if there is going to be a scene taken out to save time, it’d definitely have to be one of the more disturbing ones, such as this. After all, Chewbacca is Han Solo’s right-hand man — meaning while a young Ben Solo was growing up, he probably spent plenty of time playing with his Uncle Chewie. It’d probably be pretty heavy to see the scene in full, and given what Suotamo had to say, it doesn’t sound like it fit the tone of the movie either.

Do you think the scene should have been included in The Rise of Skywalker? Let us know in the comments.