Kingsman star Taron Egerton was almost in Star Wars

Solo: A Star Wars Story tells the tale of a young Han Solo desperate to escape from his miserable Corellian life. Hopelessly in love and seemingly unable to stay out of trouble, young Solo meets a group of people who promise to help him survive … if he can handle the chaos.

Many actors likely auditioned for the role of Han Solo in his younger years, and Taron Egerton is just one of them. He was almost in Star Wars, but had his reasons for backing out of the casting process.

Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the actor talked about saying no to the chance to play Han Solo on-screen in a way audiences had never seen the character before.

“I felt that, I’ll be honest, I got on the Falcon, I was with Chewie, I was in the costume. I got there, I did it, I lived it…” he said. “There was another round, I decided not to do it. It just felt to me like I didn’t feel ‘I’ve got to do this, this is my part’. You’re following Harrison Ford, no one ever wants to follow Harrison Ford.”

We know now that Alden Ehrenreich eventually ended up in the role, and the film was released in May 2018. Only one more Star Wars film has premiered since then — 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker — and Lucasfilm has largely shifted its focus to TV shows made specifically for the streaming platform Disney+.

There are still several movies in the works in addition to continuing to build out the Star Wars television universe, however. Taika Waititi’s untitled Star Wars film is reportedly still in the works, as if Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron movie. Despite taking a short break from movies, Star Wars isn’t done with them — and we’ll likely be hearing about actors’ “almost Star Wars stories” for decades to come.

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