Star Wars Actress Learned Puppeteering to Perform and Voice Babu Frik in The Rise of Skywalker

One of the standout elements of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was the adorable droidsmith Babu Frik, with the film’s sound editor Matthew Wood confirming that actress Shirley Henderson was so committed to bringing the character to life that she not only voiced the character, but also learned puppeteering so she could control the character to sync him up with her voicing the character. Last year delivered audiences a number of adorable creatures, with the release of The Rise of Skywalker and debut of Frik threatening the love that “Baby Yoda” had earned in Star Wars: The Mandalorian, thanks to not only their vocal stylings, but their physical presences.

Wood revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that Henderson was so invested in creating Frik’s on-screen presence that she learned how to operate the puppet “so she could improv and actually move the character’s mouth.”

He added, “She was puppeteering while she was doing the improv for the character. She came up with that language and performed it that way. We preserved all of her production sounds, and that was entirely shot on set, live, with her own movement.”

Babu Frik might not have earned as much screen time as Baby Yoda last year, but he took part in an immensely emotional scene. When our heroes discover a Sith dagger, C-3PO memorizes a script carved on it that his protocols prevented him from speaking aloud, resulting in Babu Frik being tapped to erase those protocols and effectively wiping his memory. Faced with all of his adventures being deleted from his mind, Frik served as a welcome bit of comic relief in the touching scene.

Thanks to his bizarre vocal patterns, audiences fully lost themselves in the character, having no idea that Henderson provided him with his voice, with fans knowing her performance of Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter film series.

While Frik managed to offer a handful of identifiable words in his broken speech pattern, Baby Yoda only ever made adorable vocalizations. Wood pointed out that he looked to the animal kingdom for inspiration for the pint-sized creation.

“I was recording animals at this wildlife rescue outside of San Diego,” the editor revealed. “Two of the animals I recorded had this really cute, almost childlike quality to them. One was a bat-eared fox and one is a kinkajou.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is in theaters now.

What did you think of Babu Frik? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!