Kevin Smith on How He Landed Star Wars 7 Stormtrooper Role

Last week the official Star Wars site revealed the list of voice actors who performed as Stormtroopers, aliens, and droids in The Force Awakens. The best known name on the list was director Kevin Smith, who has now revealed the full story of how he got a job on the JJ Abrams-directed blockbuster.

On the latest episode of his Hollywood Babble-On podcast (via Flickering Myth), Smith explained that it all started when he was due to host his annual, usually hugely popular panel at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con. Unfortunately Abrams was presenting in the same hall immediately before Smith, and when he announced that everyone there could attend a free Star Wars concert afterwards, it left Smith with a tiny crowd for his talk. At the time, Smith tweeted:

As Smith explained on the podcast, Abrams apologised to him backstage once he realised the situation. "I said, 'Go do your concert I'll be fine, let's take a selfie together to commemorate the worst f**king moment of my life'. So he went off to the concert and kept hitting me with emails all weekend but I never replied. What am I going to say? It was such a first world problem."

However, when Smith recounted the incident on his podcast shortly after, he added a joke that Abrams should make it up to him by casting him as Stormtrooper. "The next day I get an email from JJ saying, 'I just listened to Babble-On, we have to do that'," Smith recalled. "He said, 'They've all got voices--come in and do a voice'. I wrote him back and said, 'Normally I would say you don't have to do that, but you have to f**king do that! You don't owe me anything, but I want that more than anything in life.'

"He pulled four or five scenes and had me record a bunch of lines and they would pick one in post [production]. But the most exciting thing was that I got to see some of the scenes before the film was out."

However, Smith wasn't told which line they had used in advance of seeing the final film. "When I saw the movie I didn't know which one it was," he added. “I was cock-sure after I saw it four times at the theaters was that I was the one who goes, 'traitor!', but then I read that and found out I was this other guy."

Smith's line was: "We have incoming at 28.6! Move!' Check out the full list here.