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We sat down with the actor and puppeteer who helped bring BB-8 to life in Star Wars' sequel trilogy (The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker), to learn more about what went into the production of these films and also about why now is a great time to check out the Dark Forces Remaster.
"Hello everyone and welcome back to Gamereactor.
Today we have a really exciting interview for you because, and you may not actually recognise him but I'll tell you what, you'll recognise the characters that he is in charge of because I'm currently here with Brian Herring who famously, most recently you could argue, is known for being the man behind BB-8 from the Star Wars sequel trilogy."
"So Brian, first of all, thank you so much for spending some time with me today.
It's an absolute pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
A little bit woozy here because obviously it's like being in acting royalty right now, being a Star Wars fan."
"But yes, today we're here to talk about a little bit of all Star Wars but obviously with a particular focus on the ever-lovely Dark Forces Remaster.
And I think we start by talking about that, if that's fine with you, Brian?
Yeah, sure."
"Brilliant. So obviously you're very involved in the world of Star Wars and you probably know it in and out at this point.
So with that in mind, what do you think makes the Dark Forces Remaster so special?
What do you think makes Dark Forces so special, should we say?
Well, Dark Forces was great because I remember playing it back in the 90s."
"I was glued to it and it was such an amazing experience because back then in the 90s there wasn't a lot of Star Wars to be had.
There were some books and some comics but they hadn't re-released the movies yet and they hadn't really got into the prequels and everything that came with that."
"So it was fantastic to be able to pick up a Stormtrooper rifle and run through those hallways and have that music playing.
So it was real kind of immersive stuff and I used to play Doom as well and it was amazing because the Dark Forces, I think it was the first person you could look up and you could change looking up and down because everything else was on one plane."
"So to be able to do that in the Star Wars universe with that music playing and Stormtroopers constantly shouting, you're not permitted in here and you're in violation of Imperial law and then to be able to shoot them was a huge amount of fun.
And it was a new story and you got to go to planets you'd heard of."
"You did the Death Star plan mission at the beginning which of course has been retold several times since.
But I really, really loved it at the time and it's been brilliant just revisiting it to be able to go back through that and remember some of the puzzles and the Dianoga Trash Monsters coming out at you in the sewers and that kind of stuff."
"The remaster is gorgeous as well which is great because it still retains that retro feel and that retro sound but obviously now it looks a lot better.
So yeah, it's great. I've really enjoyed playing it again.
And it brought back all sorts of memories."
"And that's actually fascinating because I think for a lot of people Dark Forces might be a little bit unusual to them because it actually came out, the original Dark Forces, before even the prequel trilogy did.
So there might be a lot of younger fans here who are completely unfamiliar with what Dark Forces offers."
"So with that in mind, what would you say is an element to encourage them to check out Dark Forces?
What's something that makes this game still really relevant and worth checking out for Star Wars fans today?
Well, it's still challenging. It's a tricky game to play."
"It's like all the first-person shooters which I don't play a lot of but the jumping and that kind of stuff and the puzzle solving is really great as well.
But from a Star Wars perspective, it's the immersion thing.
You know, it's not a third person."
"I don't know if any of the new games are first-person.
I don't think there have been any symptoms.
There were the Jedi Knight ones that followed immediately on after Dark Forces but I think recently it's all been Battlefront and that kind of thing have all been third-person."
"And this is just great fun and those environments as well.
And of course there's been things in that original game that have now gone into more recent Star Wars projects like the whole Dark Trooper thing which the character of Kar Katarn is looking to sort of disrupt has then come into The Mandalorian."
"And fun fact, Kar Katarn's blaster from that game, the design was used for Cassian Andor's blaster in Series 1 of Andor.
So there's a juicy...
And the guy who did Darth Vader, the guy who did the voice of Darth Vader, is still doing it now within the games."
"Yeah, so he's Scott Lawrence's name isn't he?
And he's been playing Darth Vader since then and he's been doing Darth Vader, he did it in Jedi Fallen Order and that kind of stuff.
So it all sort of ties in that way, which is good."
"I suppose that's the beauty of the Star Wars universe, isn't it?
That there's things that maybe, you know, more obscure things that somebody who's very familiar with the world will know then notices pops up elsewhere."
"People who are just getting into the Star Wars universe these days maybe don't realise the heritage that something like Dark Forces has had on the wider Star Wars world.
Exactly. I think with more recent modern Disney stuff they've gone through and they've picked out a lot of the best stuff from the legends, which is now the old canon, which is now Legends."
"The Thrawn things and that kind of stuff.
And so you'll see things that you recognise and go, OK, they've been repurposed, if you will, or just incorporated into the new canon."
"And I really like that about it.
Because when we were playing Dark Forces then it wasn't the giant galaxy it is now.
So there were less kind of Easter eggs, if you will."
"But there's a lot of them out there, yeah.
Yeah. So let's talk then a little bit about BB-8 because obviously BB-8 is perhaps the thing that Star Wars fans will know you best for."
"Yeah.
When it came to taking on the role of BB-8 and bringing this droid to life, obviously Star Wars has a lot of droids in the universe."
"So what steps did you take to ensure that BB-8 felt unique and special compared to some of the other heritage droids that are out there?
Well, as you said, there's a long history of very, very brilliant...
I mean, R2-D2 and C-3PO were just iconic 20th century cinema characters."
"So to be brought on board by Neil Scanlan, who is the head of the Star Wars Creature Shop, and be trusted with this new character...
Myself and Dave Chapman, who is the other puppeteer for BB-8, we didn't take that lightly, really."
"We had to... I wanted it...
I wanted BB-8 to be able to stand in a kind of a usual suspect's line-up with R2-3PO, Yoda and Chewbacca and Admiral Ackbar.
And people go, yeah, they're all part of the same story."
"And so that was my thing, was to be able to do something.
And then Dave and I finally got to read the script.
We realised it wasn't just slightly in this movie, it was in the whole thing."
"And if we messed this up, everybody was going to notice.
So there was quite... We put quite a bit of...
I definitely put a lot of pressure on myself to make it...
You know, to try and do it as best a job as I could."
"So it all came from the script.
JJ and Lawrence Kasdan wrote the script with this droid in it.
And a lot of what you saw on the screen was on the page.
But we just had to work out..."
"Neil Scanlan has an amazing group of wizards who work for him.
And, like, Josh Lee, the engineer, Matt Denton, the animatronics programmer, and all those guys.
And Jake Lunt, who designed it."
"They made this puppet for us.
There were seven puppets for us, that we could then go away and work out how his personality would come through."
"So we had two weeks to just kind of find its movement vocabulary and what looked good doing, what didn't look good doing, and we just kind of got ready.
And then when we started shooting, we were just off, and we didn't really have a chance to think about anything ever again."
"But because something that big...
And I was a Star Wars fan in 77, so it was a huge weight to be carrying.
And I just tried to just get through each day and not mess it up, really."
"I think we managed it. I think we pulled it off.
So you were handed the built BB-8 droid, and you just had to figure out the best way to make it, the way it rolls around, the way it interacts with humans and whatnot."
"No, not really. I was hired by Neil very early on.
I think when I joined the Creature Department in 2013, there were seven of us in the Creature Department.
And by the time we got to its height, the Force Awakens had 121 people in the Creature Department alone."
"So I was there very early on.
I was brought in as a puppetry consultant.
And I was helping Neil and the designers and all the people building this stuff work out how to put people into weird positions to have them still be able to get a performance across."
"That's all the creatures, the monsters, the big creatures, the small ones, the droids.
And I was charged with finding the puppeteers and finding new performers and just going and looking around, meeting tall people, meeting small people and people with strange skill sets and saying, do you want to be in the movie, kid?
I couldn't tell anybody what we were doing."
"So it was kind of weird.
I was this man who would approach people occasionally and say, have you ever thought about going into the film industry?
And people would look at you like, yeah, all right, mate."
"What else are you selling?
But we brought a lot of new people on.
And so that was my thing.
And then suddenly this round robot designs, the original ones, the very early designs were done by Christian Altman at ILM."
"And they were brought over to London.
And then Jake Lund had to then extrapolate that further.
So we started seeing these designs for this little round robot.
And then myself and Josh Lee started doing some R&D on it."
"And I had one about this big that I would just do little character studies with.
And we'd send those to JJ.
And he'd say, that's great, go do that."
"And then we sort of assembled a team from there.
And Star Wars is really fascinating because a lot of movies these days, we're seeing this increased focus on special effects and digital effects, but Star Wars has that balance between the physical effects and also the special effects."
"So with that mind, what do you think continues to make puppetry and physical effects so crucial and so relevant in modern film?
There's a tactile sort of tangibility about a physical effect."
"And that you can tell.
You can tell it's there.
You can tell that the actors can see it.
They can touch it.
And then you get an immediacy of performance."
"I used to, I mean, BB-8 was pretty much there as he is.
You see him all the time.
I was usually about four feet behind it with rods, making the head work to myself and Dave."
"We had to have control of the head.
I would do the dialogue on set for BB-8.
So I would be beeping at Daisy whilst she was asking questions.
And there's an immediacy of filmmaking that actors can really get their teeth into there."
"And then the digital comes in afterwards and removes me completely.
So there's a great marriage now.
You can have three puppeteers standing directly behind a creature and the wizards will come in and just take you out of it."
"So you haven't got to hide and you haven't got to stick your arm through tables anymore.
Although that's still done and it's still fun.
But the marriage between the physical and the practical is when these things are at their absolute best."
"You can also play around with the performance as well.
So you can do things you hadn't thought of until you start improvising on the day.
And that becomes fun sometimes."
"And the sequel trilogy, it's an interesting case study, the sequel trilogy, because it's perhaps one of the more polarising parts of the Star Wars universe."
"The people that love it, people that find it a little bit more jarring in a way.
What's your sort of stance on the whole?
Sorry, finish the question."
"I was going to say, where do you stand on the sequel trilogy?
As a Star Wars fan, someone who's been following Star Wars his entire life, is there anything that you'd like to do differently in the sequels looking back at them?
I think the sequels are no more polarising than the prequels were when they came out."
"All the people who are upset about the sequels are too young to remember how upset the people when the original ones came out were, except they now have the internet."
"If the internet had been around to the extent it was around when the prequels came out, you'd have seen exactly the same stuff play out.
And I think in 10 years' time, you're going to see what you're seeing with the sequels, because the sequels have a huge fan base and I meet them all the time, but they're all much younger than the people complaining on the internet about how much they didn't like."
"It's perfectly fine if you don't like them.
Everything's not for everyone.
And I just think that these things are all generational and I think Battlestar Galactica said it best, this has all happened before, it will all happen again."
"Very much so.
You mentioned a minute ago that obviously there were seven BB-8 units that were created.
Did they let you keep any of them or did they all go back to the starship?
I didn't keep anything from those films."
"We were all worried about losing our jobs.
We just wanted to keep working.
So yeah, I didn't get any momentum.
No, I think the original BB-8s are actually in the Disney 100."
"There's a big exhibition going around the world at the moment and definitely when I saw it, there was a genuine BB-8 in there and I looked at it and went, yeah, that's one of ours.
And so they're all there."
"No, I didn't get to keep anything.
I have memories.
That'll do.
I appreciate we're a little bit conscious of time as well."
"So I'll throw this final question at you then, Brian.
Obviously Star Wars, it's almost like a never say never type situation.
Anyone can come back anytime.
There's always ways for people and characters to come back."
"But we know for a fact that Disney has been working on this Rey movie, this next chapter of the Star Wars saga after the sequel trilogies.
And I bring that up because obviously BB-8 is relevant in the sequel trilogies around when Rey is."
"So have you been approached about any sort of return to BB-8?
Is that something you'd like to do?
I would love to do it.
I would absolutely love to do it."
"And that's all I'll say on the subject.
I know nothing.
I'm usually the last person to find out about these things.
So if it was an opportunity to present this stuff, I would absolutely love it."
"It's one of my favourite jobs I've ever had.
So I would be back there in a heartbeat with BB-8.
It would be an amazing opportunity to roll back out with him again would be a fine thing."
"One can only hope.
So Brian, thank you again.
Thank you so much for spending some time with me today.
It's been an absolute pleasure to get to learn a bit more about Star Wars."
"Likewise as well.
If you haven't already, make sure to go check out the Dark Forces remaster for Star Wars because it is a wonderful game.
And as Brian says, nothing but positive things to say about it."
"It's fantastic.
Cheers.
Thank you very much for having me.
Take care, guys.
Thanks for watching us."
