Star Wars: Carl Weathers’ Greef Karga Was Supposed to Play a Much Smaller Role

Carl Weathers’ role as Greef Karga on The Mandalorian was at first smaller than what it turned into. The information comes from the latest episode of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian. That’s Disney+‘s behind-the-scenes look at the making of the first Star Wars live-action television series. In the episode, Weathers reveals that the writers first envisioned Greff Karga as an alien. Weathers would make a brief appearance as the alien, in full makeup and prosthetics, as a favor to creator Jon Favreau. Favreau and producer Dave Filoni reconsidered the alien angle after having some trouble with alien extras on the set.

Then Weathers came in and read for Greef. That’s when they began to reconsider the extent of the character’s role in the show. They’d planned for Greef to die from Mando’s blaster shot in the show’s third episode, “The Sin.” The creative team decided to keep Greef around. They then made Weathers’ character an important part of bringing the first season’s storyline full circle.

Weathers’ involvement with The Mandalorian will take on a new form in its second season. He’s expected to step behind the camera and direct an episode of the show’s sophomore outing.

The first season of The Mandalorian was a hit with fans. The second season is shaping up to be a huge story for the Star Wars universe, at least if the casting rumors hold true. One rumor suggests Temuera Morrison, who played Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones, will return to the franchise as Boba Fett. Rosario Dawson is in talks to play Clone Wars fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano in live-action. Katee Sackhoff is reportedly bringing her Clone Wars character, Bo-Katan Kryze, to life as well. There’s also reports that Sabine Wren, the Mandalorian character from Star Wars Rebels, will be a part of the new season. Some wonder if it could be WWE star Sasha Banks’ rumored mystery role. The show also added Justified star Timothy Olyphant to its cast.

In other good news, Disney CEO Bob Chapek doesn’t expect the coronavirus pandemic to delay the second season’s release on Disney+. “As you know we have a certain amount of inventory, particularly for Disney+, that is still fueling the machine,” Chapek said. “It’s important to note though that pre-production, sort of the development phase, can still happen during these times of lockdown if you will; and post-production can still happen. So it’s only films that are mid-stream, right in the middle of production (that have been stopped by the pandemic). Take for example Mandalorian. The Mandalorian was shot before COVID really hit, and so we’ve been in post-production and there will be no delay on Mandalorian. Same thing with Black Widow which is coming out in November.”

The first season of The Mandalorian is streaming now on Disney+.