Star Wars: The Mandalorian Star Werner Herzog Gets Real About Directing Baby Yoda

Around a year ago, the Star Wars franchise birthed a genuine phenomenon with the release of The Mandalorian, the franchise’s first live-action television series. The batch of episodes further expanded the mythos of the galaxy far, far away, while also introducing fans to the truly adorable “Baby Yoda”. The world has not been coy about its Baby Yoda love in the months since — including one of the pint-sized creature’s co-stars, Werner Herzog. Herzog, who is also known for being a prolific director and documentarian, recently talked about working alongside Baby Yoda in an interview with Variety.

“I tried to tell the humans who couldn’t see exactly what I saw,” Herzog explained. “And I said, ‘here’s the light. Our torchlight is going right in its eyes. It should close its eyes,’ and, of course, bang — they closed [Baby Yoda’s] eyes.”

This is far from the only anecdote surrounding Herzog’s relationship with Baby Yoda, with the frequently-stoic celebrity often treating the creature like a real human costar on set.

“Normally, you just approach them as actors, but Werner is special,” Deborah Chow, who directed episodes of The Mandalorian, revealed last November. “One of the weirdest moments I had on set, in my life, was trying to direct Werner with the baby. How did I end up with Werner Herzog and Baby Yoda? That was amazing. Werner had absolutely fallen in love with the puppet. He, at some point, had literally forgotten that it wasn’t a real being and was talking to the child as though it was a real, existing creature.”

Herzog also hasn’t been shy about his feelings for Baby Yoda, previously calling the character “heartbreakingly beautiful”.

“It’s heartbreakingly beautiful,” Werner Herzog said in an interview last year. “And I saw two technicians operating it remotely. One was for the eyes and the mouth, the other was for other facial expressions, it’s a phenomenal technical achievement, and beyond the technological achievement it’s heartbreaking.”

With the debut of Season 2 of The Mandalorian just around the corner, hopefully we’ll only get more behind-the-scenes interactions between Herzog and Baby Yoda.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian will return with new episodes on October 30th exclusively on Disney+.