Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver and Jon Favreau Interview

Sigourney Weaver: Thank you so much for this amazing welcome and I have to say what really is thrilling is that you have so many different fans who are dressed but you're all different ages. This is like cross-generation passion and I've really never seen it before. So bravo to all of you, I think it's so cool.

Jon Favreau: Well let me start by saying there's no better place to celebrate May the Fourth than here in Berlin with these fans. So thank you. This process when you're creative, this all started alone typing away at a keyboard with an idea of what a TV show could be for Star Wars. And I showed pages to Dave Filoni, it starts off as a very small thing. And then through bringing the cast in, the crew, the artists, it starts to build and grow until finally it gets out to the world and then the world tells you if you've done something they liked. And this little character that was created just by, you know, sitting alone and imagining what could be turned into something that's so beloved and brought so much happiness to so many people and also the Mandalorian as an iconic silhouette and face in the Star Wars world makes me very honored that I could be have characters that are standing side by side with Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, R2D2, Han Solo and I'm proud to be a part of that tradition.

Pedro Pascal: I'm so grateful that it is a big screen experience because it's the kind of big screen experience I had as a kid growing up. It's weirdly the reason that I'm here is movies like that. And here with Sigourney Weaver and Jon Favreau, I'm getting up there in age and everything's making me cry so I can't do it to you again. But I will say that having seen the movie in full, it is the kind of action adventure that I would see as a kid and then live in in my imagination for the rest of the week, for the rest of the summer, try to go back as much as I could. I see so many of my favorite movies in Jon's movie. I see Jon's love of movies in the movie. It is just a love letter to all of our experiences of having a collective moviegoing experience. And that's what it means.

Jon Favreau: I was born in '66 so I was the perfect age to see the first Star Wars film in '77. I had no idea what to expect and from the minute that first blockade runner goes past I said 'that's cool'. And then the Star Destroyer passed over my head and kept going and kept going and I felt the crowd erupt. And from that moment on my life was changed. And I wanted to learn everything I could about visual effects, how did they do these things? It was before the internet, before home video, you had to look up in magazines and I was just a fan. And then eventually got to be an usher in the movie theaters when the Return of the Jedi was playing and now I get to make these with people like this, that people that are so talented, people that I look up to. So it's been a dream come true.

Sigourney Weaver: Well I was in my twenties and it was at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York, it was a big glorious old theatre. I don't know how many hundreds of people were there and the movie started and as Jon just described, as soon as it starts you're like 'whoa, where am I? This has never happened to me before in a movie theater'. You had such a sense of being in a galaxy far away and being taken away to someplace so magical and just, you know, I feel very lucky. I was very envious of the actors that they got to be in this fantastic story and they were a little older than I was and I was just like, I was an unemployed actor at that point and I thought maybe someday I'll be in a movie.

Pedro Pascal: It's funny that you saw... there was a re-release of Empire Strikes Back that I saw at the Ziegfeld in New York when I was in my twenties. So I love sharing that with you. But also as a kid I saw them all. I've got to do my research and find out how I saw the first Star Wars movie in the movie theater, but I know that I did. Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi I remember the day we got tickets to see it finally because it was like our fourth attempt, weeks had passed, people had seen it, my sister had seen it, I hadn't seen it yet because it was always sold out and then we finally got tickets and it felt like, I don't know, getting the golden ticket.