Harrison Ford's public response to seeing another actor play Han Solo in the prequel Solo: A Star Wars Story has always been chilly, at best. He's seemed disinterested in discussing the film, and ruled out a Star Wars return.
But behind the scenes, Harrison secretly emerged throughout production of the troubled film last year as an informal advisor of sorts to Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy, director Ron Howard and his own successor Alden Ehrenreich.
The extent of Ford's previously-unknown involvement in the making of Solo: A Star Wars Story is only now being discussed publicly by the major players in a profile for Entertainment Weekly.
Kennedy has confirmed that a much-publicised lunch between Ford and Ehrenreich took place, and that the legendary actor even read the Solo script.
"What [Ford] did so beautifully for Alden was he talked a lot about what he remembered when he first read Star Wars, and what George had done with Han," she explained.
"Who the character was and the conversations he had for so many years with George about how that character developed. He gave Alden that kind of insight which was invaluable.
"There were several times in the course of making the movie where Alden would actually recount some of the things that Harrison had pointed out. I think that was really, really helpful to him."
Ford's counsel was also sought by Ron Howard when he came aboard the project last summer, following the sacking of original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
"Harrison's a very thoughtful actor and an artist, and I wanted to know what he learned about the character," Howard recalled.
"He said that Han is always torn between that sense that he was, in a way, an orphan, and therefore both yearned for connection with people and struggled with it at the same time. I thought that was pretty interesting."
The filmmaker looked to Ford for answers on Han's backstory as an orphan as well, explaining: "Han has survived and proven that he can survive, but he's never sure he's as quite as smart as he needs to be. Change that. He's not really 'smart'. That's not the word [Harrison] used.
"Han's not as on top of it as he needs to be. So he wants to give the appearance of [control], but in fact, he's often scrambling. I think Harrison played that beautifully, and Alden and I talked about both of those ideas a lot."
In terms of the wisdom that Ford imparted on Alden Ehrenreich, all the young actor would divulge is that he was advised to "tell [people that Harrison] told everything [he] needed to know, and that [he] can't tell anyone".
The upcoming film explores a never-before-seen period in Solo's life prior to A New Hope, as he meets both Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) in his travels through the "dark underworld" of the Star Wars universe.
Solo: A Star Wars Story will be released on May 25. Watch a trailer below:
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Justin has been with Digital Spy since 2010, and in that time, has covered countless major news events for DS from the US.
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