The search for the young Han Solo culminated with the casting of Hail, Caesar! breakout Alden Ehrenreich back in May. But many rogues had to audition for the part before Disney could pluck Ehrenreich from their rakish ranks, and that casting call recently played out in hilarious form on late-night TV. Conan O’Brien’s Comic-Con weeklong coverage included this look at the “audition tapes” for Melissa McCarthy, Bill Hader, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Will Arnett, and Jodie Fucking Foster, among others.
McCarthy would rather punch up the “parsecs” line with some veggie humor, 50 Cent’s blocking is off, and Arnett’s voice is perhaps better suited to an older iteration of the handsome smuggler (or at least, one who’s enjoyed a whiskey neat at every happy hour for the last ten years or so). So Hader’s the clear frontrunner, in part because he seems to be the only one who’s actually familiar enough with Star Wars to make a great prepubescent Chewbacca joke. But Kumail Nanjiani’s suggestion to make the young Han Solo Pakistani deserves its own spin-off. Maybe Disney can find a way to work that idea into its proposed trilogy.