Star Wars: Comedian Paul Scheer Details His “After Darth” Talk Show That Disney Scrapped

The Star Wars saga has often expressed a sense of humor in the galaxy far, far away, but there has yet to be an official release from Lucasfilm that delves deep into the more comedic corners of the franchise, with comedian Paul Scheer recently detailing that he hosted an officially sanctioned late-night talk show where he played Darth Vader, called “After Darth.” The comedian didn’t divulge where the program was supposed to debut, but based on his description of just how silly the series was, he implied that it will likely never see the light of day, which could ultimately be for the best.

“It was a Darth Vader talk show that took place on the Death Star. It was sponsored by Disney, no one will ever see it. No one will ever, ever see this,” Scheer revealed on Gary Whitta’s Animal Talking show. “I played Darth Vader. I did not do the full-on voice of Darth Vader, but the Emperor had a band, it was kind of like a Cantina band led by the Emperor. It was co-hosted by my brother, who looked like me but wore a Hawaiian shirt, kind of out of canon. And we did a full-on recreation of the Death Star. It looked like the Emperor’s throne room, we put a wooden desk in there, threw up a fern. We had interviews with people across the Star Wars galaxy.”

He continued, “I would have my little cards, I would be like popping them on the desk, throwing them in the air, drinking from a hot cup of coffee. Interview people like Lobot, which is Lando Calrissian’s head of security. Talking to Wedge Antilles or one of Padmé’s handmaidens. The canon of the show was all over the place, but we’d do cooking segments, we had Yaddle on. Yaddle, who’s the female Yoda who was also a sex therapist. So we’d do a lot of these dumb bits. We even did like 30 for 30 about the podrace where Anakin won, the first human to win a podrace, and it was just a very straightforward, serious 30 for 30.”

After Darth wouldn’t be the first comedic Star Wars project that was scrapped entirely, as the Robot Chicken creators had completed dozens of episodes of the animated Star Wars Detours series, which served as a satire of the franchise. The program was announced in 2012, with Disney’s subsequent purchase of Lucasfilm resulting in the announcement of a number of new projects, with Disney not wanting audiences’ first new stories in the series to be a parody of the franchise. Scheer noted that After Darth was made while heading into the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

“We got to create whatever we wanted and the cool thing was, because Disney was behind it, we got to use all the things that you could never use in life,” the comedian admitted. “Like, we could have the full Darth Vader costumes, full recreation of the Millennium Falcon, using the sound effects, using the video footage. We got to really create something that was very much in canon of Star Wars. Which, you know, is so rare to use music and video clips and stuff like that, and we got access to all of it, and then, like I said, it never aired. But there are eight episodes of it.”

He continued, “Maybe it’s for the best, I don’t know. All I’ll say is, for as much as I enjoyed it, I would imagine it would also make people incredibly upset. It definitely was not taking Star Wars seriously, at all.”

Scheer then went on to describe some of the segments he had filmed for the series, which, while funny, might confirm why Lucasfilm opted not to debut the series.

“One of my favorite bits was a deleted scene from [Star Wars: A New Hope] where they’re all hiding in the cargo hold and everyone is blaming their farts on Chewbacca, but since no one understands Chewbacca, Chewbacca is getting more and more upset about it,” Scheer detailed. “And, like I said, when Padmé’s handmaiden came on, all I was doing, as Anakin, was, ‘What does she say about me? Does she talk about me? Did she ever say anything about this? Did she say that I gave her that? We did have a wonderful time by the lake in Naboo.’ We just had a lot of fun.”

He added, “The Bespin weather report was great, just sunny and cloudy all the time. Sunny with a mix of clouds. So we got to do a lot of stuff. The cooking segments were amazing because we got to create these creatures that were oozing pus and I think we made a sarlacc soup. We really embraced everything that we could and it was written by huge Star Wars fans. I’m a huge Star Wars fan, everyone on our staff was, and all of the guests were. It was a chance for us to all embrace this thing. Like, we got to play in the best sandbox of all time.”

Sadly, while there have been various rumors emerge that fans could see Detours one day, Scheer made it quite clear that it was unlikely anyone would ever see After Darth.

Do you wish this series would be released? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

Header photo courtesy of Allen Berezovsky/WireImage/Getty Images/Lucasfilm