Marc Thompson: The Voice of Star Wars

Marc Thompson built his career on character voices. His first role was for MTV’s “Daria” where he narrated several of the male leads including football player Kevin Thompson. Later Marc Thompson became the voice of Casey Jones for the 2003 “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” series.

Marc Thompson had never heard of an audiobook when his agent asked him to do one. At first Marc was not enthusiastic about reading a book for money, but then his agent mentioned that the gig was for a Star Wars book. Marc immediately changed his mind. Marc was, like many of us, is a lifelong Star Wars fan.

Marc prepared for the audition by trying to impersonate characters such as Han, Luke, and Chewbacca. Though he had no audiobook experience, Marc was excellent at bringing the characters to life. Lucasfilm hired him to narrate the 9-part “Legacy of the Force” series and since then Marc has been “The Voice” of Star Wars.

For the last 12 years Marc Thompson has been the backbone of Star Wars audio. His range of voices is incredible. Marc’s Han and Lando are especially spot on- as if he is channeling the very soul of Harrison and Billy Dee.

Perhaps my favorite Marc Thompson voice is Grand Admiral Thrawn. In 2011, Lucasfilm commissioned Thompson to read the unabridged audio of Timothy Zahn’s "Thrawn Trilogy" and "Thrawn Duology". Thompson voices Thrawn as a calm and confident military genius. Between Zahn’s vivid description and Marc’s careful narration, Thrawn becomes something more than a fictional character. Thrawn becomes a real person, with agency.

Marc would reprise his role of Thrawn in the narration of Timothy Zahn’s more recent Thrawn books under the new Disney Canon. In these novels, Marc had to slightly alter Thrawn’s voice due to the character's role in Star Wars Rebels. The “Rebels” version of Thrawn is voiced by Lars Mikkelsen and has a whispery quality to it.

Marc claims the hardest thing he ever had to do is record the audio version of “The Force Awakens” before the film had released. Marc wanted to experience the film, before reading the book and almost refused to take the job. Marc says the biggest challenge for "The Force Awakens" is that he was not able to hear all the characters on screen while recording the book, so some of the voices are a bit off.

Fortunately Marc was able to watch “The Last Jedi” before recording the audio version, because the book was released months after the film.

Though Marc narrates almost every Star Wars book in the new Canon, there are exceptions. When the main character of a novel is female, Lucasfilm tends to commission the actress January Lavoy to read. Lavoy has narrated a dozen audiobooks since 2013, including books centered around Leia, Rey, and Phasma.

The recent novel “Last Shot” includes both the voices of Marc Thompson and January Lavoy and also the voice of the book’s author, Daniel Jose Older. The book takes place in three timelines, where Marc narrates the “Main Timeline”, January narrates the “Young Lando” segments, and Daniel narrates the “Young Han” segments.

In early 2019, two new Star Wars books will release including “Master and Apprentice” by Claudia Grey and “Queen’s Shadow” by EK Johnson. I anticipate that Marc will narrate the former and January the latter, but only time will tell.