‘There’s no way I want to be turned blue’: ‘Ahsoka’ would’ve been very different if Disney convinced a Marvel superstar worth $45m to play Thrawn

Perhaps the most popular Star Wars villain not to originate from the movies, Grand Admiral Thrawn has finally made his mark on the live-action franchise in Disney Plus series Ahsoka. Much to the delight of fans (not including those who can only see the character’s resemblance to Elon Musk), Lars Mikkelsen reprises his voice role from Star Wars Rebels in the Rosario Dawson vehicle, debuting as the Imperial arch-foe in Ahsoka episode six.

Mikkelsen joins an exclusive club of stars who’ve managed to hold onto their characters as they make the jump to live-action, then, with others including Katee Sackhoff (Bo-Katan Kryze) and Clancy Brown (Ryder Azadi). For a long while there, however, it looked like things were going to go very differently. Following Thrawn’s eventual arrival being teased way back in The Mandalorian season 2 in 2020, rumors started to emerge that Lucasfilm was zeroing in on a major Marvel star to claim the role.

Benedict Cumberbatch said no to playing Grand Admiral Thrawn

Specifically, Doctor Strange himself Benedict Cumberbatch rose up as the fan-favorite choice to portray Thrawn in live-action, due to the British actor’s weirdly close resemblance to the Chiss antagonist’s animated and illustrated form. Rumors escalated to such an extent, in fact, that Cumberbatch had to squash the talk himself. When asked about the possibility while chatting to Collider in March 2021, Benny C disappointed the internet by confirming he had no interest in the character:

“That’s a straight ‘no’ from me, right now,” Cumberbatch said. “There’s no way I want to be turned blue. I turned the air blue, very recently. No no, seriously, I have precious time with my children and I think sitting in a makeup chair and being painted blue, and the amount of time it would take to do that and then take it off at the end of the day might just … it’s not the right time in my life for that.”

Cumberbatch may well have been looking at what his MCU co-stars Zoe Saldana and Dave Bautista had to endure in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and decided a similar extreme makeover wasn’t for him, so that was that, and speculation on his playing Thrawn dried up. As it happens, of course, Mikkelsen has been able to play Thrawn without any elaborate prosthetics, thanks to the wonders of CGI. Perhaps if Lucasfilm had gone to him and revealed how they were actually planning to realize Thrawn on film, Cumberbatch might’ve changed his mind and the future of Star Wars on Disney Plus could’ve totally changed.