Thor Director Forgot Padmé Existed, Offered Natalie Portman Star Wars Role

For some reason there's a lot of love for the Star Wars prequels at the moment.

Maybe the release of Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney Plus has caused some fans to assess the maligned trilogy more kindly. Maybe the kids who grew up loving those movies are sick of the slander. Maybe Jar Jar Binks has started slithering into our dreams at night to fiddle with our perception of reality. We just don't know.

Whatever the reason, it's important to try and remember that the prequels didn't have that much of an impact on everyone - especially not older Star Wars fans. Such is the case with Thor: Love And Thunder director Taika Waititi, who apparently forgot that Natalie Portman was ever in Star Wars.

Most of you will of course know that Portman played Padmé Amidala, an important figure in the prequel trilogy - and arguably one of the most important characters in the entire Skywalker saga.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Waititi admitted that he actually asked Natalie Portman if she wanted to be in his upcoming Star Wars movie, seemingly completely forgetting that she had already played the love of Anakin Skywalker's life.

Waititi explained: “Natalie said to me, what do you do next? And I said ‘I’m trying to work on a Star Wars thing. Have you ever wanted to be in a Star Wars movie?’ She said, ‘I’ve been in Star Wars movies.’ I forgot about those ones."

While the more hardcore Star Wars fans out there probably fail to see the funny side of this and are instead pulling their hair out over the fact Waititi is looking to direct a Star Wars movie, it's worth noting the director has admitted he has some research to do.

"I’m never gonna please the fans. You know, I don’t want to mess with something that’s so treasured," he said. Also, you feel like you’ve got to do a lot of research . . . and I don’t have any time. [Laughs] I mean, there’s thousands of books that have been written, these volumes of books about Star Wars with all those characters. I just don’t have time to get through them. So I can’t say like, you know, confidently, I’d be able to do something that’s like very close to what everyone knows. I’m not promising that I’m not going to do anything like that. I’m just saying: It’d be easier for me to not do that. Would you like to see a Jar Jar Binks movie?”

As it happens, we wouldn't mind a Jar Jar Binks project at all.