The Force of Warwick Davis

Warwick Davis is the actor who has played more than a dozen Star Wars characters including the iconic Ewok, Wicket W. Warwick. It is actually only by chance that Davis landed his iconic “Return of the Jedi” role in the first place. Kenny Baker, who played R2-D2, was set to play young Wicket as well until he was struck ill with food poisoning. Therefore the 11-year-old Davis was brought in to fill the position.

As a teenager Davis portrayed Wicket in three films including the made-for-TV films “The Caravan of Courage” and “The Battle For Endor”. Davis would return to the role one more time in the 2019 film “The Rise of Skywalker”. In that film, Wicket was seen next to his son Pommet Warwick who was portrayed by Harrison Davis (the actual son of Warwick Davis).

After “Return of the Jedi” Warwick Davis portrayed the wizard Willow Ufgood in the Lucasfilm “Willow”. These iconic roles would set up a long tradition of Davis portraying characters whose names began with a W.

“I was invited by George to go to the recording session at Abbey Road Studios and watch John Williams score The Phantom Menace. While we were there I said to George, “Is there a connection between your name and Wicket’s name, in that yours is George W. Lucas and his is Wicket W. Warwick?” He didn’t answer, but what he did say was, “We need to give your character in The Phantom Menace a name beginning with ‘W.’”

 

Warwick Davis returned to the episodic Star Wars films in the late 90s with the production of “The Phantom Menace”. His role that saw the most screen time is Wald, a young rodian friend of Anakin. Yet the role that would ultimately become more iconic is Davis’ portrayal of Weazel, a gambler who sat next to Watto at the Boonta Eve podrace. Weazel would return to screen in the 2018 film “Solo” where he was a member of Enfyst Nest’s Cloud-Riders.

Warwick Davis also portrayed Jedi Master Yoda in a few scenes of “The Phantom Menace”. This included scenes on Naboo where Yoda was seen walking in the background.

“As I was so excited to be playing Yoda I couldn't help myself and slipped into my occasional bad habit of adding my own sound effects. I grumbled and hurrumphed in Yoda's voice as I made my way down the gangway.

A few seconds later, I heard: 'Cut!' Rick then said: 'Warwick, I need you to hurry up a bit and keep up with everyone else.' 'But I'm Yoda,' I said. 'He can't walk fast and neither can I in this costume.’ ”

The final “Phantom Menace” character portrayed by Warwick Davis is “Grimy”, a Tatooine street trader who appeared in the background of Mos Espa.

Warwick Davis did not appear in Episodes II or III, and it wouldn’t be until 2015 that the actor remerged into the Star Wars franchise. Davis really wanted to be featured in “The Force Awakens”, but had some trouble actually getting a foot in the door. His first plan was to tell a concept artist friend of his to draw some characters who were very short. Eventually Davis’ daughter was cast in the film, but Warwick still wasn’t. Davis would sometime just loiter around waiting to be noticed by Kathleen Kennedy or J.J. Abrams. Then one day he got the call. He was in.

In the film, Davis played Wollivan, a tiny resident of Maz Kanata’s castle.

“I could see very little, and I had a tiny little hole I could look through, and I remember just before the take, they held the clapper board near me and I noticed on it the Star Wars logo was engraved. I was like – we're really doing another Star Wars movie. It really brought it home.”

After his luck scoring a role in “The Force Awakens”, Warwick Davis would return for each subsequent Disney Star Wars film. In Rogue One Davis portrayed the alien Weeteef Cyu-Bee and Davis was excited because it was the first time one of his Star Wars characters would wield a blaster.

According to Davis a “spaceman” character was also developed for Rogue One, but never made it into the final cut of the film. 

In “The Last Jedi” Davis played Wodbin, one of the three Suerton brothers known as The Lucky Three. “Lucky”, because their species seems to have the ability to affect probability. Furthermore in a deleted scene Davis plays the Wermal, Kedpin Shoklop.

“In The Last Jedi there was a deleted scene I flew all the way to Dubrovnik to shot for one night, it was a sauna scene and they had me playing this very bizarre one-eyed naked alien. There was a moment when the heroes were escaping and the came galloping over the roof and cause the roof to shatter and the roof to fall down. I’m there horrified and keeping my dignity with a very tiny flannel and the whole sequence was cut from the film.”

Davis portrayed at least 6 characters in the film “Solo”.  Most predominately is his reprisal of Weazel, the gambler from “The Phantom Menace”. Davis even gets some lines of dialogue this time around. Davis played a number of droids in “Solo”. Wookiepedia lists DD-BD and W1-EG5 among his roles. However a little digging shows that Warwick also portrayed three characters not cited on Wookiepedia, one of them being the droid WG-22, a gladiator droid on Vandor.

“During the Sabacc game is a little character that looks a little bit like sort of like a hamster kind of, he goes up and gives Han a little congratulatory pat when he wins the game. Then we have, during the Corellia spaceport sequence, I play, he looks like a little miniature astronaut with a gold visor. And then of course there's the two droids having the droid battle the bigger red one and smaller green one. I'm the smaller of the two there.”

In the most recent Star Wars film, Davis portrays an insectoid resistance fighter named Wizzich Mozzer, but it is in the last moments of the film in which audiences are subjected to the real treat, the return of Wicket W. Warwick.

“I knew he’d be older and wiser, but there had to be a few little similarities in there, and we worked very carefully on the coloring, but he’s likely older and grayer than he was. He still has the old head tilt, which is the thing I did in Return of the Jedi, based on my pet dog, and I threw it in there in Rise of Skywalker for old times sake. And hopefully that’s the key move that reminds people, ‘Oh yes, this is the character we already know.’ ”

Davis’ contributions to Star Wars has extend beyond live action. In 2017, Davis voiced the character of Rukh on Star Wars: Rebels. Rukh, a Noghri warrior, originated in the Timothy Zahn novel “Heir to the Empire” in 1991.

"I’m thrilled to make my debut as the voice of Rukh. He’s mean, sneaky and slightly more agile than me!"

The Future

When Warwick Davis reunited with director Ron Howard on the set of “Solo” there was quite a bit of talk about a sequel to “Willow” the 1988 Fantasy film which Howard directed and Davis starred in. In 2019 Howard confirmed that a Willow series was in development for Disney + with Davis returning to the titular role.

Including Willow, Warwick Davis has portrayed a total of ten “W” named characters for Lucasfilm over the past 3 decades. Here’s to hoping we see 3 further decades of Warwick Davis in Star Wars.

*UPDATE: July 2020*

A few months after publishing this article, I discovered another Star Wars character that is probably portrayed by Warwick Davis. Wazellman is a background character from "Solo". Though it is not confirmed that Wazellman is played by Warwick Davis, he is a short creature and his name starts with a W. Furthermore, Wazellman's species is a Wickwar which is a pretty obvious anagram for Warwick.