Capote-Sounding 'Star Wars' Character Only As Gay As You Want Him to Be
We thought all discussion of The Clone Wars ended yesterday with the discovery that if Harry Knowles hates it — enough even for George Lucas Warner Bros. to swoop in and kill his embargo-shattering review — it must be some kind of radioactively awful. But new revelations have surfaced this afternoon about Ziro the Hutt, the fringe character whom Knowles described as sounding like "a racist take on a Black New Orleans Crack-Dealing Whore." Not quite, Harry — not even close, in fact, according to an interview published today at MTV Movies:
It’s not the look or design that pushes it over the top into stereotype, of course, but the voice (performed by Corey Burden), a lispy, high-pitched twang purposively reminiscent of Truman Capote. So how did a character who wasn’t even supposed to speak English wind up sounding like that? Because George Lucas insisted on it, Clone Wars director Dave Filion confessed.
“Zero, Jabba’s uncle, originally spoke in Hutt-ese, like Jabba and then he had a different sluggish voice just like Jabba, and then George one day was watching it and said ‘I want him to sound like Truman Capote.’ He actually said that and we were like ‘Wow!’” Filion revealed. “It’s a hybrid of it but the inspiration is definitely there on Capote. It’s one of those things that takes him from being an interesting character and I think really does put him over the top and does something. He’s a favorite among the crew here.”
Filion bafflingly stopped short of acknowledging Ziro's sexual orientation, however ("He’s of questionable [sexuality] at least as a slug. They tell me that these slugs can be either male or female depending"), leaving it to Lucas to wait and see how the currently developing Great Sissies of History trilogy does on its own before permuting it for a more fabulous galaxy far, far away.
