Bill Hader won’t sign ‘Star Wars’ merch and it’s BB-8’s (and a dishonest fan’s) fault
“Autograph people” don’t like Bill Hader because he won’t sign merchandise, and a lot of it has to do with an unfortunate encounter he had over being asked to sign “Star Wars” paraphernalia.
Yes, he was involved in the decades-spanning blockbuster franchise, but not enough to sign his name to it. The two-time Emmy winner served as a voice consultant for the charismatic roly-poly droid BB-8, along with Ben Schwartz, in 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Still, that isn’t the reason he won’t oblige fans with his signature.
The “Barry” star-director and “Saturday Night Live” alum explained in a recent episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast that he was put off of the whole signed-memorabilia business by an incident after a movie premiere.
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“I just don’t sign anything [anymore]. I used to sign stuff and then one time I saw somebody and they had their kid come up to me to sign a BB-8 thing and it was 3 in the morning,” Hader told host Josh Horowitz. “I was leaving the ‘Inside Out’ premiere and then we went to an after-party thing and it was super late and this guy kept his kid up all night. [He was like], ‘Go over there so he’ll sign it so I can sell it online.’
“I was like, ‘That’s f— up,’ ” Hader recalled. “And so now, I just kind of blanket, like, I’m not signing any of this s—.’”
“The Force Awakens” director J.J. Abrams attributed BB-8 to the “Beau Is Afraid” actor, which Hader said was “very sweet,” but because of the automated nature of the spherical droid’s sounds, he didn’t feel like he could really take credit for the role.
Forty years ago, on the Friday before Thanksgiving, something very strange happened.
“I came in and did like voice stuff for it that didn’t work,” Hader said. “Then, he brought me in later and said, ‘Hey, do you want to do this’ — it was like a talk box thing and then I did that — and the reason he hasn’t had me come back is because anybody can do that. It really is like a machine that you can operate.”
“I did some voice stuff that just didn’t work, you know. … I’m not really sure what Ben [Schwartz] did, but I just know that was my experience doing it,” he continued. “So it is weird that I did that and I get asked about it still.
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BB-8 isn’t Hader’s only “Star Wars”-adjacent work. He also notably voiced several characters in the YouTube trilogy “Star Wars: A Bad Lip Reading,” which also featured Jack Black as Darth Vader and Maya Rudolph as Princess Leia.
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