SDCC: Star Wars: Rebels Star Freddie Prinze, Jr. on Jedi, Sith, Samurai, Ninjas and The Breakfast Club

Asked what attracted him to the project, though, Prinze’s enthusiasm got the better of him and the Q&A session became, essentially, a lecture on why Star Wars is awesome, as told by Prinze.

Not that we’re complaining. Check it out below.

I was kind of groomed for this at a young age accidentally. I said this the other day, but it’s something that’s very relevant. I grew up watching old samurai movies and old Westerns with my grandfather — his name was Benito. He called them “oat burners,” and he thought it was the coolest thing. He loved America. He wasn’t from here, but he just thought it was the coolest place because they just did everything that everybody else wasn’t allowed to do.

So we watched the Western and then we watched these great samurai movies. And these guys would come up to the samurai — you know, like a peasant would come up — and he’d say “How are you so great, how are you so powerful?” And the samurai would say, “Well, I do this and I do that,” and they were all of these selfless acts. “And I garden and I do all of these things and I accomplish it before I have my first meal.” And the peasant says, “How can you live this way and be satisfied?” and the samurai looks at him and says, “How can you not?”

And to me, that’s a Jedi. A Jedi is almost ostracized from the normal folk because they’re so special. It’s like the smart kid in class. The alpha males in high school don’t contribute dick to society. They’re the labor force. It’s the guys you made fun of and ridiculed who are responsible for every major step forward the world has ever made. [Laughs]

You have to see the director’s cut to see the head come off, but everybody knew what happened.

Think about that: I’ll say a word you’re not allowed to say…that’s a cartoon. And that light saber fight holds up to any live-action light saber fight you’ve ever seen in the movies. I challenge you to argue that; it literally holds up. It tells a story and gives you every moment of action that you want, so…I don’t even remember the question now, but that’s awesome and people need to know that! If you haven’t watched Clone Wars, watch it and then imagine what they’re going to be able to do now.

I feel like a part of me has trained my whole life for this, to answer your first question. I read the scripts and I get goosebumps. You dream about saying those lines, you pretend to say those lines with your friends. You know, I didn’t play cowboys and Indians, I played Jedi and Sith! Or, we just called them Vader and Luke back then; no one’s gonna be anybody but those two guys. I was Luke, he was Vader, even though I always liked bad guys because they got to do anything they want.

And my daughter does, too! She was watching the Disney parade and Darth Vader was walking down the Disney parade — which is very surreal for me to experience, by the way. You have to accept it, but it took me a moment. But I have, Disney! Don’t fire me. Anyway, she goes, “Dada, who’s that?” I said, “That’s Darth Vader.” She goes, “Can he do whatever he wants, Dada?” And I had that father moment where I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s me.” I always liked the bad guys in wrestling because they only lost on the Pay-Per-Views. We didn’t have any money so I always watched the regular ones and the good guys always lost. If you wanted to see a good guy win, you had to pay Vince McMahon money to see it so I always liked bad guys.

So finally I came up with a quick answer, I said, “No! He answers to the Emperor!” She said “Who’s the Emperor?” and I said, “I am! Don’t worry about it!” And that was the end, so I got to be the bad guy and she still knows there’s rules.

Bringing your own Star Wars fandom into Rebels, do you really feel like you’re part of that same universe?

Definitely. They do something really crazy with this show, and Dave [Filoni] would be better equipped to tell it so if you get a chance to ask him, ask him. They have a program in the computer, basically, and I’m not a computer guy so this is all layman speak for me. There’s not a shot, a lens or an angle in Rebels that’s not from the original trilogy. The entire world we live in — all the shots, the lenses, everything you see, is from the original. So it gives you this feeling as you’re watching animation and looping lines of “Oh my God, I saw that walker in Return of the Jedi and the reveal is…I mean, you’re literally in this world. These guys know what people wanted. So they’re making sure they find that next generation of Star Wars fans but they give the parents of them something to watch that they can literally, directly connect to because that’s your original contact point, right? The Original Trilogy; we’re all of that age. So they want to give your brain these little, subliminal messages of seeing shots you’ve seen with music cues you’ve heard and you’re in it and you’re there. So yeah, I would say I feel like we’re in that world.

I mean, we shoot the show in order; it’s like The Breakfast Club, they shot that movie sequentially except the beginning and end. They literally shot that movie in order and you get a very organic, smooth experience because usually we’ll do a scene and you and me are fighting and then we’ll do another scene weeks later and the way we perform it now, the shouting scene doesn’t make sense anymore. People are like, “Man, why’s he so angry?” Because that’s the note that you got when you were there at the moment!

When it’s all in order, you know where you need to be. You know where the high points are, you know where the low points are, and we get to do that; not everyone does.

Did you have an opportunity to infuse a little humor into this world?

Everyone does. We all do. THere are moments in the script already. Simon [Kinberg] wouldn’t get to write Star Wars if he didn’t understand the levity they bring and the “I got one!” “Don’t get cocky, kid!” You know what I mean?

That’s friggin’ hysterical and they’re about to die. And that’s when you want those jokes are at the level ten, you know? When the walls are closing in and there’s a monster in the DumpSter, you need a joke and the show gives you that exact same experience.

As far as latitude on dialog, there’s sometimes you don’t need it. With the Zeb character, with Steve, you can go off. He’ll give you nine takes and they’re all different and Dave just sits there and smiles until he runs out of ideas and then just goes, “Okay, just give us all those and we’ll pick the best one.” And if I see an opportunity I bring it up and if they like it, they use it and if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work. But there are moments for that, I think as the season went on, everybody got more confident by episode six, seven, in terms of trying to pitch things. And as you see someone else do it, then you go, “Okay, I can do it.” So by the time we got to Episode Six, we were re-recording a lot of stuff in one and two and three because you work with someone like Steve and you see him just go for it and you’re like, “Oh I gotta go for it bigger than what I just did.”