One of
Solo: A Star Wars Story's best surprises came when we learned that Qi'ra had been reporting to Darth Maul the entire time. Sam Witwer voiced the villain during that jaw-dropping sequence and there was obviously a lot of excitement surrounding the character's future...before the movie flopped and pretty much killed Disney's plans for future spinoffs.
After first playing the villain in
The Phantom Menace, Ray Park returned as Maul but original voice actor Peter Serafinowicz was nowhere to be seen (well, heard). However, he's now revealed that he originally did voice the character but was replaced last-minute!
"I recorded this scene and I went to whatever studio, Pinewood Studios, and I was on the set and I spoke to [director] Ron Howard for about half an hour about the character, and like, what he'd become, which was like 29 minutes more than I spoke to George Lucas about the character 20 years ago," he explained.
"Ray Park was coming in the day after to film the actual physical thing and they had to bring him in a blacked out limousine. It was like an area of the set that was off limits to everybody and it's all secret, secret, secret."
"I saw it on Twitter that there were people at the premiere and I thought, 'Huh, I was not invited.' And then I got this email saying, 'We're sorry, but we actually changed the voice actor to [Sam Witwer],' which is, kind of, fair enough," the actor admitted. "They said it was better for the continuity of the thing, which is a bit disappointing."
It's a shame that things panned out this way for Serafinowicz but the decision was understandable, especially as the actor only provided a couple of Maul's lines whereas Witwer has voiced him in several in-canon TV shows and video games over the years.
What's also interesting is the fact it was Ron Howard who shot Maul's cameo; does that mean the villain was added in reshoots and was never going to factor into Phil Lord and Chris Miller's version of Solo? Unfortunately, we may never learn the answer to that.