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Giancarlo Esposito tells Kelly Clarkson he broke 6 darksabers in epic 'The Mandalorian' fight scene
"The prop guy comes to me on the fifth one and he’s sweating because he’s not telling anyone that I’m breaking them."
Moff Gideon's heated battle with Din Djarin in the Season 2 finale of The Mandalorian was apparently so intense to film, that Giancarlo Esposito broke six Darksaber props — much to the chagrin of the show's anxious prop master.
Sitting down for a lovely chat with Kelly Clarkson this week on her talk show, Esposito (who plays a former governor of the Empire) revealed that he made the decision to perform his own stunts for the duel after it became evident that the younger stuntman did not match his own body type.
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"He was 25 years younger, he was standing like this, and his shoulders were kind of small. Very nice boy, but I went, ‘How is that gonna work? We never see his face and my body is very different,'" the actor remembered. "So Jon [Favreau] went, ‘Hmmm, you’ve got a point there.’ Before he could finish his sentence, I said, ‘I’m doing the fight.’ I went off in the corner with [stand-in and stunt double for Pedro Pascal] Lateef Crowder — a great, great stuntman. I wanted to do it so badly."
Esposito described the experience as "phenomenal," including the part when he mistakenly failed to parry a blow from Mando's Beskar spear and fell to the ground. "I missed blocking him this way, he came over the top, he hit me — bang! — on my forehead, I went backwards. The whole room stopped. Slow-motion, I’m falling backwards and I hit the ground. I went, ‘DO NOT CUT!’ I jumped up with my lightsaber [slashing the air]. It really was great. The room gasped and they kept going."
As filming progressed, however, the "sweating" prop master continued to switch out Darksaber props, not telling the rest of the crew that they were fast running out of blades with each subsequent take.
"He’s just shoving them away," Esposito said. "He comes over to me and says, [panting] ‘I just want you to know, I just have one more. You’ve gotta be careful.’ Because you want to pull your shots, you want to be really careful. But you [also] have to make it look good. We made it through. I got a great, great scene and I learned a lot."
Watch Kelly Clarkson Interview THE MANDALORIAN star Giancarlo Esposito below:
The Season 3 finale of The Mandalorian premieres on Disney+ tomorrow — Wednesday, April 19.
You can catch The Kelly Clarkson Show weekdays on NBC or streaming on Peacock.
