While Adam Driver was hardly an unknown name in Hollywood prior to 2015 thanks to appearances in movies like Lincoln and Inside Llewyn Davis, plus his role as Adam Sackler in the TV show Girls, there’s no question that Star Wars: The Force Awakens significantly boosted his profile. As one sees when they go through the Star Wars movies in order, Driver played Kylo Ren in all three of the Sequel Trilogy’s entries, and we’re just a few years away from The Force Awakens celebrating its 10th anniversary. Yet all this time later, Driver continues to be reminded by Star Wars fans of one of Kylo’s biggest moments in that movie, with it even feeling to him sometimes like this is mentioned “every day.”
Driver stopped by Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? (which can be streamed with a Max subscription) to talk about his career with the title host ahead of the arrival of his latest cinematic endeavor, Ferrari, one of the final 2023 movie releases. On the topic of Star Wars, Wallace brought up how Kylo Ren killed Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, the character’s own father, in The Force Awakens, lead the actor to say (via CNN):
Somebody reminds me about that every day… Not every day, it used to be more, but now it’s probably once a month someone will let me know I killed Han Solo.
The Force Awakens opened to the masses on December 18, 2015, so we’re coming up on eight full years of Adam Driver being continuously reminded of how Kylo fatally stabbed Han Solo, one of the most popular characters in the Star Wars franchise, if not all of cinema. I can imagine this gets annoying after a while, though at least this is something that Driver only has to deal with once a month now. Still, should you run into the man out in public, maybe mention a different Star Wars reference instead since Han Solo’s death has clearly been overdone.
Mike Wallace then asked Driver if it was “tough” dealing with the idea that he was going to “off Harrison Ford,” and Driver explained how the experience of shooting that Force Awakens scene went for him as follows:
I remember shooting that day, and it didn’t feel like that at all, obviously. John Williams wasn’t playing in the background. And it was very emotional, actually, shooting it was Harrison. Harrison was so generous and contemplative, and to me that was a great moment on set actually, even though it was his death.
It is important to mention that while Harrison Ford wanted Han Solo to die going as far back as Return of the Jedi, it wasn’t as though he mandated the character’s ultimate fate as a condition for reprising the role. Rather, director J.J. Abrams and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy made that decision, though Disney CEO Bob Iger also had a say. In any case, the final chapter of Han’s story unfolded in The Force Awakens, although Star Wars fans did get to see Adam Driver and Ford together one last time in The Rise of Skywalker when Kylo Ren saw a vision of his father, which led to him reclaiming his Ben Solo identity.
You can stream The Force Awakens with your Disney+ subscription, and keep visiting CinemaBlend for news about the upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows. Adam Driver’s performance as Enzo Ferrari can be seen on the big screen starting December 25.
