Star Wars legend Mark Hamill talks about his return to the role of Jesse James, otherwise known as the Trickster, on The CW’s The Flash and working with John Wesley Shipp again after more than twenty years.
Following a screening of this week’s episode of The Flash, titled “Tricksters,” Hamill and The Flash showrunner Andrew Kreisberg joined a group of reporters for a Q&A about the episode.
After his last appearance on the 1990’s The Flash, in which he starred with John Wesley Shipp who plays Henry Allen in the show’s current iteration, Hamill was pleasantly surprised at the chance to reprise the role.
My daughter Chelsea is a big fan and I watched it from the first episode. In fact, I even thought, since they were doing Mirror Master and Weather Wizard and various other Rogues Gallery characters, I wonder if they’re going to do The Trickster.
And then I got a call from my business people saying that they wanted me to do something on The Flash. And I was thinking, like a colleague of John Wesley Shipp’s, a professor, something age-appropriate, you know? I’m not getting back into that one-piece jumpsuit, you know? The spandex deal.
So I said, “Who do they want me to play?” And when they said The Trickster, I just couldn’t believe it.
Hamill was skeptical at first, but after a conversation with Kreisberg, Hamill was all in.
I called Andrew and the one thing that impressed me about the show is how smart the writing is. I mean, it’s got the fantasy element and the comic book elements but it’s really strong in characters, I think. The backstory of the father wrongly accused, from the very first episode that’s really a strong hold on the audience. And you get to know so much about the personal lives of these characters. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when they had such an ingenious idea as having Devon Graye play a new Trickster with me appealing to — all of these villains have unwieldy egos.
Hamill was enamored by Graye, praising the young actor for his performance and calling him a “worthy successor” to the role.
Now I’d seen Devon working and I thought he was very very good, but there was a take where he confesses his devotion for me and he was so real, it was astonishing, how troubled a kid this was. I’m just doing my crazy comic book guy; it’s just not tethered to reality in my mind, and he brought it so close to home in terms of how emotionally damaged he was, I’m telling you, it just moved me beyond words.
With Hamill guest starring on the show, Kreisberg knew there was absolutely no way Hamill could make it through an entire episode without a scene with Shipp.
Well, I knew there was no point in doing this if we didn’t have Mark and John in a scene together. Early on, it was one of the things that we said, early on when we were constructing the story, that The Trickster should kidnap Henry because it was a great way to satisfy both the fan in all of us but also you want Barry to really care about The Trickster.
Hamill raved about the cast of the show and working with Shipp again.
John Wesley on the original series — really underrated. He’s such a good actor…Well, he’s not underrated. He’s got a mantle full of Emmys. I don’t have a mantle full of Emmys.
And then of course Grant is, again, tremendous. He’s so likable, so natural, so perfect for this character because The Flash was always much more sunny and upbeat than some of the other, darker characters. And you couldn’t do better than having a foundation like that to build a series around.
And then Jesse Martin? Come on, that’s money in the bank. You know that guy’s done more episodes of Law & Order than Lucille did it I Love Lucy? I have lots of irritating minutia like that.
Kreisberg assured that this won’t be the last that fans see Hamill in the role or on the show.
What’s so fun for us and why we were again so grateful to Mark for wanting to be part of this is, when I sit down and I think of Wentworth Miller and Mark in a scene together and watching the dichotomy of them…
I think that sometimes there’s a tendency to just spit out the same villain week in and week out on these shows and for us, having people who are so different and having people who have powers and having people who are slightly unhinged but geniuses, it’s…that’s the other reason we wanted to do the Trickster, too. You have so many villains who have these amazing abilities, either because they’re metahumans or because they have this incredible weaponry. And what was always cool about The Trickster on both series is that he was smart. No matter how crazy he was, he was smart and he thought like four steps ahead. Watching The Flash and our team going up against somebody brilliant, a lot of the times our shows are about how to chemically or scientifically or how The Flash can use his powers to stop somebody, but this time it was, they really have to outthink him.
Hamill joins The Flash in Tuesday’s episode, which airs at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
