Star Wars Offered Jim Henson The Role Of Yoda – Here's Why He Turned Them Down

In the 1970s and '80s, Jim Henson and the Muppets were on top of the world. And it's easy to understand why: The Muppets were magical. As a concept, Muppets are simple things; little more than crude hand-puppets. But through the work of Henson and his Muppeteers, the characters came to life in startling ways. We believe in the Muppets; we believe they exist in our world, and interact with us, and ride bikes, and play the banjo, and do all sorts of things we kind of take for granted. The fact that Disney now owns the Muppets and seemingly doesn't know what the hell to do with them is a great pop culture tragedy; we need the Muppets now more than ever. Bring the Muppets back, damn it!

Another franchise owned by Disney is, of course, "Star Wars." And in 1980, the world of the Muppets and the galaxy of "Star Wars" came together in the form of the sequel "The Empire Strikes Back." Because that's the film that gave us Yoda, a puppet who isn't really a Muppet but feels cut from the same cloth (or felt, if you will). And as it turns out, Muppet master Jim Henson was originally approached to help bring Yoda to life. But Henson was a busy guy at the time and couldn't make it work. However, he had a backup plan.

Frank Oz was Jim Henson's right-hand man. The two met in the 1960s when the Muppets were being conceived, and they went on to work together perfectly and complimented each other's habits until Henson's untimely death in 1990. It's safe to say that without Frank Oz, the Muppets would not be nearly as memorable or iconic as they are today. Jim Henson may have been the brains behind the Muppets, but Oz was there with him nearly every step of the way. So when it came time to bring Yoda to life for "The Empire Strikes Back," Henson suggested Oz.

According to George Lucas (in an interview with Leonard Maltin), Henson was the first and ideal choice for Yoda. "I went to Jim [Henson] and said, 'Do you want to do this?'" Lucas said. "And he said, 'Well, I'm busy, I'm doing this, and doing that, I'm making a movie and all that — I really can't, but — How about Frank [Oz]? You know, Frank's the other half of me.' And I said, 'Well, that'd be fantastic.'"

The movie Henson was likely working on at the time was "The Great Muppet Caper," which Henson directed. But Oz, who was also in "The Great Muppet Caper," clearly had more free time on his schedule. So Oz came on board and served as both the puppeteer and the voice of Yoda. ”Ninety-nine percent of the people think that I just did the voice,” Oz said in an interview once. ”They don't grasp that the hard part, the really, really hard part, was the actual performance of the puppet.”