The man inside the suit

This post doesn't have to do with either faith or football, but with writing.

I'm now in my final weeks of my internship at the Post-Gazette. Yesterday I had the tremendous pleasure of doing an over-the-phone interview with Anthony Daniels, the British star who played C-3PO in all six Star Wars movies.

He was an extremely charming and delightful man to interview. He spoke quickly (and with a British accent), which made it difficult at times to catch the whole quote, but I think I came away with a very good story. Mainly, it focused on his part-time role as adjunct professor at the Entertainment Technology Center, which is a graduate program run by CMU.

I focused the story mainly on that, which unfortunately made it difficult to include some of the funnier or more colorful tidbits that came up during the interview.

But this is why we blog, after all, isn't it? So that we can include and write about snippets and pieces that don't always fit elsewhere.

Right now, Daniels is on tour with with Star Wars: In Concert, a multimedia event that combines all six movies into a two-hour concert. The show will be coming to Pittsburgh on Nov. 29.

During our phone interview, Daniels was having trouble with his phone, which started beeping.

"It's R2D2 on the other line," he said.

A few years ago, CMU started the Robot Hall of Fame, which Daniels hosted in 2003. R2D2 was the first of four robots inducted into the Hall. C-3PO wasn't inducted until the following year in 2004.

I asked Daniels if C-3PO might be jealous that R2D2 was inducted first.

As a complete gentleman, Daniels answered charmingly, "No, no, no, no. ArToo was first because he had to tidy things up and make sure everything was ready for C-3PO to arrive. C-3PO was probably doing something important then."

Which is funny because he was in fact doing something important: He was hosting the awards.

He also said that he never understood the underlining webbing of the Star Wars storyline until he became involved with this concert. I've never been a big Star Wars fan (gasp!), but the way he talked about the concert, he really made me want to go catch the show.

As he talked about the concert, and the lighting and the live music, and the standing ovations the show has received, he said, "I'm getting goosebumps just thinking of it."

He is also a big fan of Pittsburgh, but not so much of the road systems here (I did include this in the story). And, he doesn't know the difference between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Shame on you, Mr. Daniels.

By the end of the interview, which lasted about 45 minutes, he made me feel very at ease. I came away from it thinking I had interviewed a friendly college professor rather than an actor involved with one of the biggest epic stories in movie history.

The article I wrote should come out sometime this month in the Post-Gazette. I'll let you know...