There is no Official word on this character, however, Brian Blessed has been very generous with information on his role.

Alert reader Gaven McCarthy brought this to our attention. Today's Daily Express, a British paper, had an interview with Prequels actor Brian Blessed. The article talks about Brian's fund-raising, and then goes on about his film career which leads to the Prequel:

Brian will also be returning to the big screen in 1999 as Boss Nass, in the first of the new Star Wars trilogy. "It's all a bit hush-hush, but I can say that my character is a goody, and that I was very happy with my fee."

"Landing big jobs like that helps take the pressure off the fund-raising for my climbing expeditions," he says.

Reader Rowan Bridge attended the annual PanoptiCon '98 Dr Who fan convention in England on the weekend of 10/05/98. On Saturday, Brian Blessed attended as a special guest because he had a cameo appearance in a Dr Who adventure in the late 1980s. While up on stage, he mentioned a few pieces about his involvement in the upcoming Star Wars movie. Rowan reports...

"He confirmed he was playing Boss Nass, whom he said was the king of the Gungans.

He also said their language sounded like a cross between Italian, English and Jamaican. (I assume he meant someone from the West Indies speaking English rather than Creole.) He then said a few words to the effect of 'you talk like this as a Gungan' with a Gungan accent. To be honest it sounded more like a (rather surprised) west Indian speaking English, than Italian, but there's always the chance that they may change the voice electronically.

He also said that there would be lots of creatures that looked like dinosaurs in the film and said that most of his filming had been done against a blue screen. (No great surprises there.) "

Anonymous Source - This source had the following to say about Nass:

It's also worth noting that Boss Nass and other underwater city officials look completely different (from Jar Jar). Not only much fatter, but totally different, although they have some vague fish characteristics like Jar Jar. They also have completely different speaking patterns from Jar Jar. It seems very unlikely that they belong to the same race. Also, in one scene, Jar Jar refers to "Da Bosses". The following is example of what Jar Jar speaks like. In writing it looks like this: "Mesa cause-ed mabee one or duey lettal bitty ax-adentes... yud-say boom da gasser, un crash Der Bosses heyblibber... den banished." Do YOU understand that??? I have some difficulties.

Brian Blessed's character (Boss Nass) is a 99% CG character. He lives on the swamp planet. Boss Nass also appears in the end celebration sequence, but only as an invisible character. He is not there. He just provides the voice! (In some scenes he is in make-up.)

OLD DRAFT STUFF - Many moons ago, before Chris Kivlehan joined TheForce.Net, he noticed an interesting passage in the book "Star Wars - The Annotated Screenplays" by Laurent Bouzereau. While flipping through the book again for trivia questions, we ran across that same passage again. However, this time we had a little bit more insight into the prequels than we did a year ago, and it seems to have even more significance than we first realized. You know how Lucas doesn't throw away ideas? Well, see if these things from the early drafts of Empire Strikes Back sound a little bit familiar:

"During story conferences, George Lucas and Leigh Brackett referred to Cloud City as "Ketbrae or Kettlebrae: The Gas Planet"; in early notes this planet is described as "nothing but clouds with cities that sit on giant piers that go down into gases." The story meetings suggest that maybe the planet has a force field that makes it invisible until one passes through a certain distance, and all of a sudden it becomes visible. Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and Threepio arrive on the Gas Planet and are attacked by the Whatnots, aliens that live in the center of the fog; they retreat back to the Falcon and take off. A patrol finds them and guides them to Han's friend, who lives in another part of the system.

That sounds a heck of a lot like one of the encounters between our Episode 1 heroes and the Gungan! Keep reading...:

"The notes indicate that the aliens should be semistoic creatures, sort of tall, thin, white, maybe similar to the aliens in Steven Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977). They should be very noble, but threatening; they carry a spear or a pneumatic dart gun or a long pole with a beam that comes out of it. There's an alien chief described as fair, wise, and noble."

Doesn't the chief sound like Boss Nass? (Not necessarily in character, but in the fact that he's a chief of a not entirely primitive tribe, unlike the Ewoks.) And don't the Whatnots sound a lot like the Gungan?

If you haven't bought the Annotated Screenplays, you really need to run out this weekend and pick up a copy. It's worth every penny and reasonably priced.