The Once & Future Emperor
Ian McDiarmid prepares to rule the Star Wars Universe
by Ian Spelling
September 1999
Starlog #266
The Emperor has some new clothes. In Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Ian McDiarmid returns as Palpatine. Not the dreaded Emperor Palpatine from Return of the Jedi, but rather the young, politically savvy and ambitious Senator Palpatine. Oh yes, and McDiarmid also plays Darth Sidious, the evil Sith Lord whose ominous plans forever change the lives of Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) and Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd). McDiarmid's Star Wars redux came about very simply: George Lucas phoned him, invited him to meet for a drink in London and asked him to reprise his role.
"I was happy that he wanted me," McDiarmid states. "George is a wonderful storyteller. Look what he did with Star Wars. It's the supreme evidence of his brilliance. He started right in the middle of the saga. Star Wars was Episode IV. That was always the way he imagined it. Now, with The Phantom Menace, he's going back, and who knows if he'll go forward as well? He apparently says he won't do Episodes VII, VIII and IX. I understand that. To do several more would take up a very large chunk of his life. As a matter of fact, just to do Episodes II and III will take up a considerable chunk. But, I suppose, Richard Wagner spent a large part of his life when he set out to write The Ring. Star Wars is, in some ways, comparable to The Ring.
"George actually mentioned Shakespeare quite a lot during my conversations with him. The whole panoply of the Star Wars films is very Shakespearean. It's also very much Mark Twain, Buck Rogers and Wagner. But it's somehow not a ragbag. There are allusions to classics past, but the vision is a governing one and it's George's. At the end of the day, Star Wars is not Shakespeare, Wagner or Buck Rogers, but George's own precise and clear story, even if you can trace back his influences. I'm sure that there's some Akira Kurosawa and D.W. Griffith in there, too."
A Palpatine Presence
McDiarmid enjoyed himself immensely on the Phantom Menace set, working with Neeson, McGregor, Portman and Lucas. "I knew Liam a bit before the film," the actor says. "He did [a play called] The Judas Kiss for my theater company, the Almeida. Liam and I actually had very few scenes together in Episode I. That's also true of Ewan.
"I've known Ewan for quite a few years. His uncle, Denis Lawson [who played Wedge Antilles in the first Star Wars trilogy] and I are great friends. We've been friends since we were at drama school together rather further back than I care to admit. I remember that Ewan first came into my theater when he was studying acting at Guild Hall. He came to see his uncle and me in Volpone. That's when I first met him, and I've watched his meteoric rise ever since. I've seen him now and again, on and off. As I say, though, we weren't often together in Episode I.
"We actually had one day together very recently -- yes, we worked very close to the release-with Ewan, Jake and myself [for the scene in which Palpatine announces that he intends to closely watch the career of young Skywalker]. Ewan and I swapped old stories. We're both Scots, so there was an immediate bond.
"Most of my scenes are with Natalie," McDiarmid continues. "She's a very fine actress. The costumes were very heavy and the headdresses were extremely heavy, but she came through it wonderfully well. I like George. I didn't sense much pressure on the set. He creates a good, family-community atmosphere. Although we all know how big these movies are, they're actually done by a small group of expert people. You do feel that on the set. There's never any pressure to get it right. You can always go again. It's relaxed and straightforward.
"Also, the thing about George is that he makes strong instinctive decisions. You feel that you're cast because he thinks you are the person who can play the role. You already have that confidence. And if anything didn't feel right or appropriate, we would discuss it as any actor and director would. George and I hardly discussed anything at all, actually. We didn't need to discuss much. That kind of straightforwardness makes for a very relaxing relationship between a director and an actor. I was very pleased to see him take full charge on The Phantom menace."
McDiarmid -- an actor/director whose other credits include Dragonslayer, Gorky Park, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (directed by Yoda puppeteer Frank Oz) and Restoration, stage productions of Tartuffe, Peer Gynt and Mephisto, and such TV movies as Karaoke -- was a major presence during production on The Phantom Menace. He appeared in the very first scene shot, in the second-to-last scene filmed during principal photography and in that scene completed just a few weeks before the film reached theaters.
What scenes, then, stood out for the actor?
"There were two that fascinated me." he replies. "On that first day, everybody was excited and nervous. We did what we usually do. We worked through the scene. We rehearsed it. We looked at our marks. People made suggestions and then we were all set to go. Everybody seemed relaxed, although, obviously, everyone realized that this was a historic moment. Everybody was aware of it. Now, at Leavesden Studios, they don't have a loud bell that goes off to tell everybody 'OK, be quiet. Shooting has begun.' Leavesden has a klaxon. None of the other actors had heard this klaxon before. So, when quiet was called for, this extremely loud klaxon sounded and practically everybody on the set had a nervous breakdown. This was just seconds before turnover, and then we all collected ourselves because we knew there was no time for panic. The next word was 'Turnover' and the word after that was 'Action.' But the whole set had jumped. It was quite funny.
"In terms of the actual sequences, there's the scene in the Senate that stands out. It was one of the last scenes completed by the digital guys at ILM. Filming it was extraordinary. We had a vast expanse of blue, and the Senators, the representatives of the various planets, were in pods that rose and moved in [when it was their turn to speak]. There was one pod that we all shared at different times. It certainly rose, but it didn't move [around, although] it revolved, usually in anti-clockwise direction. Natalie and I were up at the top of this pod, revolving around. She had on this very large headdress and we were both doing our best to keep ourselves steady while being accurate about our lines. And someone said, "Oh, by the way, we're here."
"That was amusing, as it was hard to focus on anyone or anything else. There were two angel cams going in the opposite direction of our turning pod. I was trying not to step on Natalie's dress and she was trying to look composed and regal. We knew this would all be on the screen soon enough and we had to make sure there was not even a flicker in our eyes that betrayed the work involved. It had to look real and in the moment. People may say, 'Surrender to technology' and all of that, or 'There's nothing for the actor,' but ultimately the camera was on me and Natalie and we had to act. We had to make it believable. You may have all these sets and people, but it's all just to make it possible to believe that this moment between these characters in this setting is actually happening."
In Sidious' Future
And now it's time to jump back into the past, as McDiarmid reflects on Return of the Jedi (which he previously discussed in STARLOG #82). The final film in the original Star Wars trilogy, Jedi was directed by the late Richard Marquand. Though most Star Wars fans consider Jedi the weakest of the three movies, McDiarmid's scenes as Emperor Palpatine are widely thought to be among the film's best-acted moments. "I've heard that," McDiarmid comments. "At the time I was working, however, I couldn't have told you that. I filmed my scenes in three weeks in total secrecy, as everyone else did. I knew that Palpatine was a very powerful person, and I obviously knew a little bit about what was ultimately going to happen between Vader [David Prowse] and Luke [Mark Hamill]. But I didn't know all of it.
"I didn't know, for example, the tremendous revelation at the film's end. I didn't know that [the late] Sebastian Shaw would be in the film [as the dying Darth Vader] until I saw him at the studio while I was getting my makeup on. I knew Sebastian for years. We had worked together at the Royal Shakespeare Company and so on. He was a delightful man. I said, 'Sebastian, what are you doing here?' And he said, 'I don't know, dear boy. I think it's something to do with science fiction.' I thought that was a very good line, and I considered using it myself when people asked me the plot of The Phantom Menace. Sebastian was in a state of blissful ignorance. Most of us knew at least a little bit about what we were doing."
Did McDiarmid envision a backstory for Palpatine during the Jedi shoot? And, if so, did it jibe with the revelations within The Phantom Menace? "I didn't come up with much of a backstory, as I recall," the actor says. "I remember joking with George about Palpatine. Richard directed Jedi, but George was around a lot. And he actually directed the sequence in which Darth Vader threw the Emperor down the hole. I got a chance to spend some time with George then, and I said, 'I know how this guy started out. He had a very trying English public school education.' George laughed very loudly. He thought it was a good joke. Of course it has nothing to do with Palpatine's history. In fact, that was probably the nearest I came to speculating about how Palpatine turned into this terrible creature. So, I had no idea. I just played him as the oldest, most evil figure in the galaxy.
"In some ways, it was very easy to do that, because all the apparatus was right there for me. In Jedi, we had this throne room and that great swiveling chair. There was a large expanse of studio. And I had those wonderful robes. It all made me imagine Richard Nixon in the Oval Office. Also, I had tunnel vision because of the contact lenses. Tunnel vision is probably a good thing to have if you're playing an Emperor. So, I could only see straight ahead. As a result, people had to help me around a lot. I used that, as an actor, to play the old man's frailty, in the physical sense. We knew that he was frail, but that he still had a laser-like mind."
And now, on to the future. This fall, McDiarmid will star as Barabas in a production of The Jew of Malta to be staged at his beloved theater in London, the Almeida Theatre Company, where he has served as co-artistic director (with Jonathan Kent) for more than a decade. The actor also returns to the screen in November in the headless horseman thriller, Sleepy Hollow. "My character, Dr. Lancaster, is a local worthy [the British equivalent of an alderman] of the Sleepy Hollow community," McDiarmid reveals. "It's a community that's sleepy on the outside and tempestuous on the inside. I've had a great year, having done The Phantom Menace, Sleepy Hollow and a British television adaptation of Great Expectations just shown on the BBC [in Britain and on PBS in America]. Sleepy Hollow couldn't be more different from The Phantom Menace. The sets were done in England, often at Leavesden, with many of the same people who had been involved in Star Wars.
"What can I tell you about Sleepy Hollow? I don't think I'm bound by any secrecy clauses. It's a Tim Burton movie. It's American Gothic at its best, with a terrific story and a wonderful script. Tom Stoppard is just one of the writers involved. Some of the actors I know very well, among them Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Richard Griffiths and Jeffrey Jones, your wonderful American character actor. That's not to forget the leading stars, Johnny Depp, Christopher Walken, Christina Ricci and Casper Van Dien. It was very, very hard work, particularly for Johnny, because he's in practically every shot. But it was an enjoyable film to make. We laughed a great deal. I hope we've got the right comic edge in the movie. I hear that we have, but that will be for others to judge when Sleepy Hollow comes out.
"I'm not quite a villain, by the way. I'm a fearful doctor who's behaving badly, of course, though he's nowhere near what I'm building to in Star Wars. All of us in Sleepy Hollow have a guilty secret. There is a character in the film, not mine, who is in charge of the guilty secrets and who blackmails the rest of us into this town conspiracy. So, Dr. Lancaster spends his time in a state of febrile paranoia. It was a very nice change from Palpatine."
Palpatine, however, shall return. In fact, McDiarmid should find himself back before the camera, in Australia, shooting Episode II sometime next summer. "Nothing is signed yet, but the implication is that I will be in Episode II," he notes. "I'm pretty sure that it will be me embodying the character as he ages and progresses and goes over to the dark side. It's an exciting prospect; so odd, but so exciting."