Billy Dee Williams Had One Reservation About Playing Lando In Star Wars

Billy Dee Williams was primed for stardom in the 1970s. He reduced grown men to tears as Chicago Bears running back Gayle Sayers in the classic made-for-TV movie "Brian's Song," and made a super suave impression as Diana Ross' manager in the Billie Holiday biopic "Lady Sings the Blues." Handsome as hell and armed with a velvety bass voice, Williams was a seduction machine in search of the right vehicle to vault him to the Hollywood A-list.

This being the 1970s, when Black leads were generally relegated to the Blaxploitation arena, that vehicle never arrived. He was terrific in the title role of John Badham's "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings," but he couldn't build off its box office success because the studios weren't developing movies with Black protagonists.

Although he was in his leading-man prime, Williams disappeared from the big screen for four years after "Bingo Long." When he finally resurfaced in Irvin Kershner's "Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back," he had to play second-fiddle to Harrison Ford as Han Solo's roguish old buddy Lando Calrissian. Williams pours on the charm as the administrator of Cloud City, and makes Han sweat a bit when he sweet talks Carrie Fisher's Leia, but his plot function is to betray his buddy. Not terribly glamorous.

And yet, this was kinda what Williams was looking for at this point in his career.

In an interview for John Phillip Peecher's 1983 tome "Star Wars: The Making of 'Return of the Jedi,'" Williams revealed that he initially balked when offered the part of Lando. As he told Peecher:

"I had some reservations about doing 'The Empire Strikes Back.' I thought that perhaps Lando was just another romantic character. But [director] Irvin Kershner came over to my house, and we sat and talked. Ultimately, I made the movie for a lot of reasons: Kershner, and the opportunity to work with George Lucas. He is part of the new breed of filmmaker, and I wanted to be part of that."

But once he understood the sheer commercial and cinematic scale of what he was getting into, he was an eager participant. Per Williams:

"I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity of playing Lando Calrissian. I fell in love with the name. If you're an actor — the kind of actor I am — I like to have fun. I want to do everything I can conceivably do before I'm dead. I'm in these films, the comic books, and now the radio serial. It's Toy City!!! I'm living out all my fantasies. How do you not do a 'Star Wars?'"

Williams had the unexpected pleasure of returning to the character 36 years later when J.J. Abrams closed out the "Star Wars" sequel trilogy with "Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker." Calrissian feels a tad shoehorned into that godawful film, but Williams was still tickled to revisit the character that, over the decades, had become the epitome of "Star Wars" cool. As he told Variety in 2019:

"It was fun. I really enjoyed it. I'm older now, so for me, it's more a source of amusement than anything else. I never expected to really be back in that costume or in the movie, so I still kind of chuckle about the whole thing. I knew people were clamoring for Lando to come back, but I didn't feel like that would happen. It's a nice feeling to be welcomed back."

Lando is set to return at some point in the near future when Donald Glover, who portrayed the character as a youthful cad in "Solo: A Star Wars Story," stars in a standalone Calrissian adventure. It's about time. But while we love Glover in the role, it's a shame Lucas and the industry weren't ready in the early 1980s for a Williams-fronted galactic adventure. Williams never wanted for work (and eventually retreated from acting to pursue his passion for painting), but he should've been one of the biggest stars of his era.