Gaten Matarazzo, known for his time as Dustin on Stranger Things, is now part of the Star Wars universe thanks to the new Disney+ mini-series LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy––and his character is unlike anyone else in the galaxy.
The actor brings to life Sig Greebling, a nerf-herder (aka, a farmer of sorts) who is very up-to-date on his history in his home galaxy.
While Sig may think he is just an ordinary dude, he eventually encounters a powerful artifact that changes everything that's ever happened in the Star Wars universe. This leads to some crazy new introductions: Light Side Vader, Rebel AT-ATs, Genosian Jedi, Darth Ray, and, most crucially, Darth Jar Jar himself.
Gaten Matarazzo's Character Is a Star Wars Fanboy Like Himself
In an exclusive interview with The Direct's Russ Milheim, LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy star Gaten Matarazzo shared what makes his new character, Sig Greebling, unique compared to the rest of the galaxy far, far away.
Sig has "the one arc I haven't seen in Star Wars," Matarazzo exclaimed. He is "a Star Wars fan:"
"The one arc I haven't seen in Star Wars, character-wise, is a Star Wars fan because it would just be ungodly meta for them to try to do that. And they did... We've reached a point in the Star Wars universe where the stories of the First Order, The Empire, The Rebellion the Jedi, they're all of legend, pretty much almost like religious or something like that... So it gives the writers an opportunity to have somebody who is extensively obsessed with the universe of Star Wars while also living in the galaxy. And it is a genius concept."
Matarazzo admitted that lots of Sig is "already [him]," so "it wasn't much of a stretch" to play the character:
"So I was like, this is already me. The amount of times I go into deep dives in group settings of Star Wars, and most people just like nodding their heads trying to deal with it. I'm like, I do this maybe once a month, so it wasn't much of a stretch, and it just seemed like the assignment was just to have fun. Was just to giggle at what we read on the page, and I was reading it cold when we went to record a lot of the time."
One would imagine that the actor is used to having to be tight-lipped about what he works on, but he admits that with Rebuild the Galaxy, his "limits have been tested:"
"I've had to be tight-lipped about a lot of things; this one has been so hard to be tight-lipped about. My limits have been tested... I recorded this show in 2022 or early 2023, I was not even allowed to mention it, [it] hadn't been announced as a show until well after we had finished recording. I couldn't even necessarily mention that I was a part of a Star Wars show at all until very recently... Now I've just been spilling the beans in my private friend group and more so to the point where friends of mine are like, you should probably not tell me that."
"[Star Wars is] the reason that I developed a love for cinema as a whole," the star explained:
"It's the reason that I developed a love for cinema as a whole. It was my first actual obsession in life. I think it was the first thing that I sunk my teeth into and just really started to become a whole personality. I remember that for about a month when I was seven, I would just walk around school with a padawan braid, and I've got a drunken tattoo. It's a real cornerstone of my love for art [and] anything that has to do with being a nerd as a whole... It will always be probably the biggest chunk of my heart for cinema as a whole."
Rebuild the Galaxy is akin to Marvel Studios' What If…? in that it explores alternate scenarios of stories everyone already knows and loves.
When asked what he thinks of the use of the Multiverse in narrative storytelling, Matarazzo admitted that while he initially "thought it was really fun and cool," it eventually has become "incredibly exhausting" for him:
"Initially, I thought it was really fun and cool. I think it's grown to be incredibly exhausting, and it's very rare that I found something that I can look at and--because to me, when you have like an extensive, like multi-universe concept, when things happen, like characters die, or there's influential moments that are irreversible, all of a sudden, you have the option of going into infinite numbers of universes to kind of backtrack and erase all the progress you've made, in case it didn't age well with you. And I think it's a convenient plot device."
What makes Rebuild the Galaxy different, however, is that it is "borderline making fun of the Multiverse:"
"But I think what's fun about this show specifically is that it's borderline making fun of the Multiverse and kind of going fully into the deep end of, like, at least what I like to look at it as is when I read it, it feels to me like a satire of Multiverse TV in which, like, it goes down a completely absurd rabbit hole that could never possibly happen In the Star Wars show. It's just us poking the Lucasfilm bear and seeing what we can get away with... They kind of just let us have playful fun with the concept of Multiverse. I think it makes it refreshing and really fun."
Like any good protagonist in the Star Wars universe, Matarazzo's Sig comes with a new droid: a Gonk droid named Servo, who, inexplicably, even gets an upgrade no droids of his kind have ever had.
The actor described Servo as a "really old dog" who may have plenty of inconveniences, but you still love him all the same:
"Servo rocks because Servo is like when you have a really old dog, and you love him so much, and you've had him for years, but like, he smells, he doesn't really get up there easily anymore. Sometimes he poops before he goes outside, but he's like, the man, and that's kind of just the vibe. It's just like a really old senile dog, and it's very fun."
One of the scenes earlier in the show features Sig giving a very cheeky and meta recap of the events of the Star Wars universe over the last several decades. As a big fan of the content himself, it would make perfect sense for Matarazzo to want to improvise and have lots of fun telling those stories.
However, the actor admitted that, at first, he tried sticking to the script as much as he could. Eventually, Matarazzo "felt more included to [improv] as [they] got later on in recording:"
"I felt more inclined to [improv] as we got later on, as we started later episodes and stuff. I didn't know how close to the script I wanted to stick… I remember I would just interject with little bits of Star Wars information and references that I had picked up from my time as a huge Star Wars fan and ask if I could mention it. And a lot of times it was like, a yes, we'll record it, but maybe not, because [Lucasfilm] still has to sign off on anything related to the Star Wars universe…"
"I was always really ready to riff on it," he continued, pointing out how there were "so many high-ground jokes:"
"I was always really ready to riff on it, and there were always little references, especially dialog references. There were so many high-ground jokes and so many 'Do it's.' The amount of times I said, 'Do It' in that booth to see if it would make it in the cut. I think one of them may have."
As for what Gaten Matarazzo might want to do in his career next, the actor opened up about how he wants to "start something from scratch:"
"For the most part, what I'd love to do is probably originate a role, start something from scratch, from a really early process, especially on stage. I'd love to be a part of the process. I think workshop a play, see it be written, have a role in mind, and build a character over the course of a good amount of time before people actually see it."
The actor admitted that he has done something similar to that before with Stranger Things, but this time he's aiming for "the stage:"
"The last time I got to do something that was that in-depth was when we started 'Stranger Things,' which was the beginning of the show because Dustin, of course, hadn't existed before. So when I was 12, it was a lot of pressure to try to build somebody compelling like that. The writers help a lot, but I'd love to kind of sink my teeth into something like that, again, especially for the stage, because I've never gotten to do it for the stage."
LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy is streaming now on Disney+.
