There are few characters more iconic than Chewbacca, the Wookiee and co-pilot to Han Solo. Over the years, he’s been portrayed by a few different actors, starting with Peter Mayhew. However, there was a chance that Mayhew didn’t get the role, with it nearly going to Bill Walton instead.
A Hall of Fame basketball player who has since been a broadcaster, Walton was on the call with Dave Pasch for a game between USC and Oregon when the topic came up and Walton admitted he has a connection to the character.
“Chewbacca is modeled after me,” Bill Walton said.
At that point, Dave Pasch laughed and explained that he had heard that Bill Walton himself was actually in the running to play Chewbacca.
“You’re always serious,” Walton replied. “That’s one of your problems is that you that you don’t have fun with your life…No, George Lucas is as cool as they get, and I remember the night that George and Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar], Bill Russell, and me, we were all up in San Francisco for a big fundraiser for the Martin Luther King memorial.”
Pasch kept pushing Walton, emphasizing that he hadn’t answered whether or not he was in the running to play Chewbacca.
“I auditioned for Chewbacca,” Bill Walton said. “And they said, ‘No, but we’re gonna model the character after you.'”
Not being an actor, there were probably limitations to how Bill Walton would be able to perform as Chewbacca. At the same time, that hasn’t stopped NBA players from putting up varied performances in movies before, from Space Jam to Steel. However, with Walton playing for Portland when the first Star Wars movie was made and released, he likely would have had some scheduling conflicts.
At the same time, Bill Walton did make it into the movies. That includes Celtic Pride and an uncredited role in Ghostbusters. So, he does have some chops for the industry.
Instead, Lucas went with Mayhew, a professional actor who was over seven feet tall in his own right. It was a role he held onto through The Force Awakens, with his age forcing him to step away after that. He died in 2019.
One thing that Bill Walton wasn’t clear about was how Chewbacca is modeled after him. George Lucas obviously had a tall actor in mind for the role. However, it’s hard to imagine that meeting Walton was why he wanted that. It’s also not clear how any of the legendary Wookiee’s mannerisms match up to Walton’s, or if their personalities overlap. Regardless, it’s an incredible story from Walton.
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