By George & Josh Bate
As revealed in this week’s new trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu, the bounty hunter Embo will make his live-action debut in the upcoming Star Wars film.
As pointed out by @jtimsuggs on Twitter/X, there is a pretty bizarre story about how Dave Filoni came up with the voice of Embo.
In a featurette for The Clone Wars episode “Bounty Hunters” on StarWars.com, Filoni detailed how he drew influence from a French Smurfs book to voice Embo.
“I needed a way to come up with a language for Embo. My editor, Nic Anastassiou, who is French, he had some of his Smurf books, all written in French, because his son Alex comes in and reads them sometimes. So, I just picked one of these up, and I cannot speak French. And I opened it up, and I intentionally pronounced these French words very poorly. It just so happened that Nic liked it, and [Steward Lee] the director liked it. So, in the end, I am Embo.”
Filoni also reveals in the featurette that Embo was originally going to die in the episode of The Clone wars, but he was simply too kill to be killed. “In the original story, he died,” Filoni revealed. “Everybody was watching it, and everybody was like, ‘Ah this Embo, we really like this Embo.’ Not because of the voice, but because the action was cool,” Filoni explained. “Suddenly, people were saying, ‘We shouldn’t kill him.’ Then we had to reshoot it, and Embo then was alive. So Embo’s out there now. Who knows what Embo’s future is going to be, but he’s got a cool hat.”