Actor Who Played Greedo Just As Baffled As We Are By George Lucas’ Latest A NEW HOPE Edit

In a new interview with Empire Magazine, Paul Blake - the actor who played Greedo in 1977's Star Wars: A New Hope - has finally* broken his silence on the recent discovery of a brand-new edit of that film's infamous "Who Shot First?" scene, which was uncovered by fans watching George Lucas' classic film following its debut on Disney+ earlier this week (if you missed that brouhaha, get caught up here).

The entire interview is very funny and well-worth reading, but we'd like to shine a light on a few particularly entertaining portions of the exchange. Asked if he'd seen the new version of the sequence, Blake says:

"I did! I couldn't understand a word of it. (laughs) It confused me incredibly, but I've never understood anything about the movies anyway, particularly that. The convention I've just come back from, I had a million opinions from everybody. This new word!"

That new word, of course, is "Maclunkey". Greedo says the word mere seconds before Han does to Greedo what Han is famous for doing to Greedo, and the new edit of the film doesn't provide a subtitle. This word captured the imagination of social media on Tuesday (which is to say: people were making "Maclunkey" jokes for about 24 straight hours, the vast majority of which were passable at best), before someone finally pointed out that "Maclunkey" sounds a lot like the Huttese term "ma klounkee”, which loosely translates to "This will be the end of you." You can see how that might work, given the context.

Anyway, Paul Blake has an alternate theory:

"Yeah, well [Greedo]'s talking about his Scottish grandmother there. Greedo had a Scottish grandmother and an Irish grandfather, and a Rodian step-mother. That's why he shouted 'Maclunkey' just before he died. He's about to meet his grandfather. How absolutely absurd, what is George [Lucas] doing these days?"

What is George doing, indeed! 

Head on over to Empire to read the rest of their interview with Blake, which I promise you is well worth your time, and do stay tuned for updates on both Star Wars and Disney+ as further developments occur.

* = Total elapsed time: ~48 hours