My favorite part of any Star Wars panel like the one for Rogue One today at Star Wars Celebration is the terrified looks on the cast members’ faces when they’re asked to talk about their characters. They sweat and stammer, and look nervously at Kathleen Kennedy like at any moment if they say the wrong thing she’s going to end them with a Darth Vader Force choke.

The veil of secrecy around Star Wars is thick and protected by legally-binding contracts stronger than any deflector shield. That’s just the way it is. But that doesn’t mean the actors like it. Mark Hamill, who had one of the toughest times navigating the no-spoilers policy around Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the mysteries surrounding Luke Skywalker, said today at his own Celebration panel that the obsession with secrets can be “really annoying and intrusive.”

You get call sheets, there’s no names, everybody’s got a number ... You read the call sheets wondering who’s working today. ‘Oh I love 22’s work. She’s twice as good as 11.’

Annoyed though he might be, Hamill said he understood the policy. “It’s just that they want the surprise to be in the movie theaters, not on the internet.” Still, Hamill admitted that it “can get really out of control sometimes” with the constant shredding of scripts to keep them from leaking out. “I need old school,” Hamill continued. “I need a script that you can write on and take home and look and read. So they’d let me have one scene and I’d keep it on my person. Because you get really paranoid, ‘Oh I left the pad, I wonder if the maid knows the code.’ ... It drive me crazy, it really does. But it’s for your viewing pleasure that we do this.”

These actors have this incredible needle to thread doing these panels and publicity. Everyone wants to know stuff, but they don’t want to know too much, lest they spoil things. So good luck saying absolutely nothing of substance for the next year and a half, Mark Hamill! You’re our only hope until Episode VIII opens in theaters on December 15, 2017.

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