Peter Serafinowicz told his kids he was going to be Darth Maul in 'Solo' but then got axed

A gutted Peter Serafinowicz has told how he revealed to his kids he was ‘going to be in the new Star Wars film’, but was then left on the cutting room floor.

British actor and comedian Serafinowicz memorably voiced Darth Maul in 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, with martial arts expert Ray Park playing the role on screen.

And when Maul returned for a brief cameo in Solo: A Star Wars Story, Lucasfilm called on Serafinowicz once again to do his voice.

Read more: Darth Maul actor ‘fat-shamed’

He recorded his lines, and quite rightly thought it would be safe enough to tease to his kids that he was going to be in one of the movie events of 2018.

But then, when he didn’t get his invite to the movie’s premiere, he started to get a bit suspicious.

Speaking on the Collider Live podcast, he said: “It was all secret. I went to Pinewood Studios. I was on the set. I spoke to Ron Howard for about half an hour about the character, and what he’d become. Which was like 29 more minutes than I spoke to George Lucas 20 years ago. [Lucas] just said ‘just make him sound evil’.

“So I did it, and it was all super secret. Ray Park was coming in the day after, to film the physical thing. They had to bring him in a blacked out limousine. It was an area of the set which was off-limits to everybody.

Read more: Simon Pegg – ‘The new Star Wars movies are missing George Lucas’

“Anyway, I was excited that this film was going to come out. I was going to take my kids, and their friends. I told my kids ‘it’ll be a cool thing, we can go with your friends to see the new Star Wars, your dad’s in it’.

“I’d seen on Twitter a couple of days before that there were people here for the premiere, and I thought ‘Oh. I was not invited. Oh well.’

“Then this email said ‘we’re sorry but we changed to voice actor to Sam Witwer [who plays Maul in the animated Star Wars Rebels animated series]. They said it was better for the continuity. But it was a bit disappointing.”

Asked by the podcast hosts ‘Did you go see it?’, Serafinowicz replies flatly ‘No’.

“No, I boycotted it. It was on the news and everything,” he jokes.

Gutted.