Willow Star Talks Studying Val Kilmer's Movie Performance
The penultimate episode of Willow's first season was released on Disney+ today, which means fans have one more chance to see Val Kilmer pop up in the series. Unfortunately, the new show is not expected to feature the return of Kilmer as Madmartigen, but after hearing the character's voice last week, many are wondering if we'll get a glimpse of the iconic actor. Kilmer has struggled with his health after a battle with throat cancer, and filming during COVID didn't feel safe, so they ended up having to write him out of the series. However, his presence is felt throughout the show, and it wouldn't be too shocking if they managed to film some kind of short, silent cameo. In fact, a huge part of the series has been following the journey of Madmartigen's daughter, Kit (Ruby Cruz), who learned some big truths about her father in last week's episode. During a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cruz talked about watching the original Willow film and learning about her character's father as well as her mother, Sorsha (Joanne Whalley), who does appear in the new show.
"As an actor, it was a really cool opportunity to have footage of my character's parents meeting, and it also allowed me to understand their personalities. So instead of having to come up with this whole backstory for myself, I could watch the original movie and see Madmartigan's sprightliness. He's very outspoken and very confident, and Sorsha is defiant, strong-willed and unafraid to go against the grain. So those were definitely things that I put into my character, but I also envisioned how those people would raise a child. What parts of them would Kit get annoyed with? What parts of them would Kit want to reject? So it was a really cool experience to be able to play with that," Cruz explained.
Who Voices Madmartigan in Willow?
In last week's episode, Kilmer and Whalley's real-life son, Jack Kilmer, provided Madmartigan's voice.
"Jack has been a great friend to Willow all along, you know," showrunner Jonathan Kasdan recently told Decider. "Between Joanne and Val he basically is the child of the Willow franchise." Kasdan added, "We actually recorded with Val and we used his performance as a guide track. Then Jack was given Val's performance to listen to and then copy what his dad had done in terms of you know, the performance elements of Val's thing."
The first seven episodes of Willow are now streaming on Disney+.