It wasn't that long ago that The Mandalorian's Baby Yoda was the hottest thing since sliced bread and, even now, The Child may have more people talking about it on a day-to-day basis. That red-hot popularity was good news for Star Wars at large at the time, though actors Adam Pally and Jason Sudeikis took some heat for their infamous punching of the character in Season 1.
At the time it was filmed, neither actor could've imagined how big the moment would become for fans. In fact, Jason Sudeikis told Uproxx in a recent interview that he had almost completely forgotten about it after filming:
Yeah, that was a whole thing. You know what? I kind of forgot about it. I can’t remember exactly how many weeks, months went by from when Adam Pally and I did that with Favreau and Taika Waititi. For me, the most significant thing was my little boy Otis, who, like any little kid from the last 50 years, loves Star Wars. And I remember he even got to see baby Yoda. And it didn’t hit me when that became such a huge thing when the first episode of Mandalorian premiered and everybody went hog wild about Yoda, baby Yoda, it didn’t even hit me then like, ‘Oh shit.’
Jason Sudeikis seemed to know Baby Yoda was a big deal but still had no inkling he was going to feel the wrath of the Star Wars fandom when a scout trooper voiced by him would deck the Force-sensitive, 50-year-old baby. The moment came in the Season 1 finale and, while there were comedic elements to the scene, it was a bit jarring for viewers.
Even so, Jason Sudeikis swore he wasn't thinking of the punch during the weeks of Baby Yoda hysteria that followed after the premiere. He wasn't even the first to find out the internet was coming after him either, and he may not have found out if it weren't for Olivia Wilde:
Nope. Forgot. Didn’t even… because it didn’t show who he was before and it was just this one-off neat thing where you get to dress up like a scout trooper, not a Stormtrooper just so you know. [Laughs] I think its a scout trooper, it’s not a Stormtrooper. Anyway so they premiered on a Friday or a Saturday, whatever it was, I know it was the weekend because Otis and I were playing video games and Olivia [Wilde, Sudeikis’ partner] came into the room and goes, ‘Hey, you’re trending on Twitter’ and I’m not active on social media so in this day and age it’s kind of like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And then immediately it’s like, ‘Wait, why?’ I have no idea why. I already got a hard enough last name to spell. For it to be trending is bonkers, and then when she says, ‘apparently you punched Baby Yoda’ and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s right!’ I totally forgot that I literally hit… then I watched it and I was like, ‘I’ll be darned. How about that?’ So that was the extent of it. It was very surreal and I started getting texts from friends going, ‘You bastard’ and people saying like, ‘Did you really get to wear the suit or was that just your voice?’ All those funny questions. And Liv is active on social media so I knew she was catching some guff on my behalf.
For any Star Wars fans wondering if their tweets reached Jason Sudeikis, sounds like the answer is no. Of course, a vast number of tweets were only made in jest, and it's not like Suedeikis or Adam Pally suffered immensely for the transgression. At least, not as much as they would've had their punches broken the model of The Child, which was a thing that could've happened.
It's kind of crazy a moment that was so forgettable to Jason Sudeikis became a national pop culture phenomena, but it's cool to hear about the whole fallout from his perspective. I much prefer to hear he was almost entirely unaffected by the drama than had it hurt him in some way, even if I was among those "angry" about his scout trooper taking a shot at The Child. Plus, both fictional characters got their just desserts soon shortly after the hit, so who can really be that mad?
The Mandalorian Season 2 is set to drop on Disney+ in October 2020. Continue to stick with CinemaBlend for all the latest news regarding the streaming original and to stay up to date on the latest happening in television and movies.
