Warwick Davis Never Thought He Would Reprise His Star Wars Role

Since 1983, Warwick Davis has played 15 different characters throughout the many "Star Wars" iterations. At age 12, Davis played the head Ewok, Wicket, in "Return of the Jedi," a role he reprised for two subsequent Ewok-based "Star Wars" spinoffs, as well as providing a cameo in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker." In "Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace," Davis served as a body double for Yoda, played a greed-headed alien named Wald, and a spectator at the film's podraces named Weazel. Davis has also played various droids and voiced a few aliens throughout.

Weazel was a character that, according to Davis, was initially meant to be another masked alien. During production, however, director George Lucas felt that it was high time that Davis' face be seen on screen in a "Star Wars" film, and he was outfitted with hair extensions instead. Weazel was seated next to the character Watto (Anthony Secombe), an unscrupulous, slave-owning trader of shady goods. Weazel's association with Watto implied that he too was shady in some way. Little else was spoken about the character and Davis didn't give the character a second thought for many years. 

18 years later, Davis was hired to appear in the then-in-production "Star Wars" spinoff film "Solo: A Star Wars Story." Davis was seemingly meant to make a brief cameo as a new, unnamed character who was to stand on a parapet and look threatening as a member of a rascally space gang led by the intimidating Enfys Nest. As he clarified in a 2019 interview with StarWars.com, however, the decision to make that unnamed character into Weazel came by organic brainstorming. 

Warwick Davis said it was a coincidence that someone came upon a photo of Weazel from "The Phantom Menace" during production on "Solo." He said: 

"When we were working on 'Solo,' we were looking at the design of this character, one of Enfys Nest's gang, and we were talking about it for ages. We were trying different things, making drawings, and throwing ideas into the hat — scars and lenses, shaved head, all sorts of things — until someone picked out a picture of Weazel and said he looked kind of cool. The look then kind of dictated itself based on an older version of the character."

Davis was 18 years older, and Weazel was a little older as well. In terms of "Star Wars" chronology, "Solo" took place a few years after the events of "Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith," but a few years before the new "Obi-Wan Kenobi" TV series. That would make "Solo" set about 18 to 20 years after the events of "The Phantom Menace." Weazel, naturally, would have grown in that time and could have easily moved from being a shady trader on the planet of Tatooine to joining a vaguely righteous gang of weapon-toting rebels. 

Davis himself went down a similar mental path, suddenly filling in the gaps in Weazel's life. For the actor, the return of an older character made poetic, logical sense. He said: 

"I thought it was perfect, and then I started to think about what his journey could have been between those two points. He went from a gambler to a freedom fighter, trying to help Enfys make a difference. It all made sense."

Davis also played the droids DD-BD, W1-EG5, and WG-22 in "Solo," although their backstories are not explained so succinctly.