Maxance Vincent
While Sam Witwer has portrayed Darth Maul for over fifteen years, ever since his first appearance on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, playing him in a television show where he becomes the protagonist, Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, felt different.
As he explains to Awards Radar during a virtual Zoom press day, Witwer essentially had to reinterpret what he knew about the character, because the nature of the show felt different from anything else he’d done before with the character:
“It should be noted that, even though I played the character for 15 years, it was not entirely clear how to play him in this show. It was a different kind of thing because we were going for a more feature-film vibe. We hired a bunch of live-action actors to round out our cast. I was looking forward to conveying more with less, if that makes sense, because if I were doing a two-episode arc of Darth Maul on The Clone Wars, and the tone of that show is the way it is, then I would have plotted out the arc. I would know where a high note can go, where the low notes are, and you plot that out.
However, with 10 episodes, it becomes more like my experience with live-action television. You’re really plotting out what the big beats are, and you’re spacing them out over a longer arc. Maul doesn’t lose his temper until episode seven. However, through that, we are still discovering all the different colors and flavors of the character. We’re dealing with a more nuanced color palette in terms of his characterization, and his screen time allowed us to go to a level of detail with him that we just couldn’t before.”
Even though he’s lived with this character for such a long time, Witwer still finds new layers to him, because this show allows him to “peel the layers of this character and discover that inside him are some truly good intentions, and some serious trauma. However, there is a lack of dealing with either the good intentions or the trauma, because his psychological tool set is very limited. We had to go there. There was no choice. You must go big or go home with this type of character.”
In our video conversation below, we get a chance to peel all of those layers and unpack some of the key scenes of the season. Knowing that Maul: Shadow Lord has already been renewed for season two gives us some excitement that the character will be even more developed than he was in this first season.
Watch the full interview below:
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