If someone had told you shortly after the release of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith that sixteen years from now, Ice Cube’s son would be co-starring with Ewan McGregor in a TV series focusing on Obi-Wan Kenobi‘s self-imposed exile between the events of Episodes III and IV, you’d have gotten more than a few funny looks.
As it turns out, next year’s Disney Plus exclusive wasn’t even O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s first time auditioning for a role in a galaxy far, far away, although it worked out much better for the actor second time around. In a recent interview with Collider, the Straight Outta Compton star revealed he’d already missed out on the chance to play Lando Calrissian in Solo, before his next bite at the intergalactic cherry yielded much better results.
“I’m a real big Star Wars fan. I had auditioned for Lando for the Solo film, and when I didn’t get it, it crushed me. I was like, ‘You know what? I quit. I’m going back to being a writer. I’m done.’ I was filming Swagger, and my agents were like, ‘Yo, we need you free in the next two days, noon.’ I’m like, ‘All right.’ They’re like, ‘Just listen. You want to take this meeting.'”
Donald Glover did a great job as the smooth-talking smuggler in Solo, and he’s been heavily rumored to return in some capacity as part of Justin Simien’s Lando, but Jackson will ironically get to the small screen Star Wars sandbox before the man who beat him to the punch in the Anthology spinoff.
As is the case with the majority of the ensemble, we don’t know who Jackson is playing in Obi-Wan Kenobi as of yet, but that’s expected to change when Disney Plus Day unfolds on November 12.
