Jack O'Driscall alerted us to an article in the Irish Times today. As you may or may not know, Adrian Dunbar was all set to play Prince Bail Antilles of Alderaan (seen below).

Unfortunately for Dunbar, his part was totally cut from the film. He explains why:

"Well, I did Star Wars, but I wasn't actually in the film because George Lucas called me up and said that for plot reasons he couldn't include my character - which I found a bit strange. I only had five or six lines and the only reason I was to do this one was because Lucas wanted to include me in the next two. And then he said he couldn't. It's all a bit . . . I don't know. It's all up in the air. You go in and you stand in front of a big, blue screen and there's three guys with pig's heads behind you talking in some weird language and it's just mad. Mad. "Before we did it, the director came up and said to me: 'By the way, George wants you to do this with an American accent'. And I said: 'That's the first I've heard about it'. And he said: 'Well, that's what he wants'.

So I practised a bit and got my couple of lines off in an American accent. And after I did it there was a silence. And then I heard this voice saying: 'That is the worst American accent I've ever heard'. And I thought, 'who the f*** is that?' I peered out through the lights - and it was my old mate Liam Neeson taking the piss."

Madness notwithstanding, he's quite happy to be "in" the next two films of Lucas's planned trilogy; "you just go on about your life, and then one day you get a call saying 'we're making the next one'. Seemingly that's what happens. Very strange."

What's unclear here is whether or not he'll have some other role in Episode II or III. We'll see!