Peacemaker's James Gunn Reveals Hilarious Bloopers of John Cena's NSFW Star Wars Joke
You never expected to learn the darkest secrets of the Star Wars universe by watching a comedy about a DC Comics antihero, did you? Several moments from the first few episodes of HBO Max's Peacemaker series have had fans talking, but none quite as much as a conversation between John Cena's titular hero and his temporary captor, Judomaster (Nhut Le), about the anatomy of a Wookiee. While talking about his action figures, Cena warns Judomaster not to try anything with the Chewbacca toy because Wookiees have teeth in their buttholes. "That's canon," he says with the straightest face you can possibly imagine.
That's obviously not actual Star Wars canon, but it is one of the funniest lines on Peacemaker to-date. As fans learned on Tuesday, it's also a line that writer/director James Gunn made up on the spot, struggling to even tell his actors about it without laughing. Gunn shared a blooper video on his social media accounts with some BTS footage of that scene, and the challenge it was to even get the line out.
"Behind-the-scenes of discovering that Wookiees have teeth in their buttholes on the set of Peacemaker," Gunn wrote in the post.
In the video, Gunn attempts to feed the new line to Cena over the microphone on set, laughing every time he gets a word or two into it. Replying to fans in the comments, the Peacemaker creator laid out how scenes and lines like that work on the set.
"Yes. This gives you a sense of what set it like," Gunn explained in the comment. "I'm off screen on the God-mike, constantly directing and tossing out new lines (in this case a line I couldn't get through), while [John Cena] & [Nhut Le] add their own two cents. It's a fun set with talented people."
To reiterate: Nowhere in Star Wars canon does it mention anything about Wookiees having teeth anywhere but their mouths. However, the line works so well for Peacemaker because it's not true in any way. Peacemaker has a tendency to believe things he reads on the Internet, no matter how untrue they may be at times. His full confidence in the inner-workings of a fictional creature's rectum just goes to show how strongly he'll believe in something he thinks is correct.
New episodes of Peacemaker are released every Thursday on HBO Max.