Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter: Interview with Sam Witwer

Sam Witwer’s incredible contribution to our beloved galaxy far, far away has spanned across different mediums—starting from his legendary role as Starkiller in The Force Unleashed video games to his iconic voice performances as Maul in The Clone Wars and Rebels. The latter has imprinted into the character so much that every new material involving the Sith has had the vocal stamp of Witwer, whether it’s the latest LEGO Star Wars video game or short stories in audiobook format. From The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark to Stories of Jedi and Sith, Sam Witwer has had the opportunity to get his feet wet in this form of Star Wars storytelling—eventually leading the actor to perform his very first, fully narrated Star Wars audiobook: Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter. In an exclusive interview with Tatooine Times, Witwer shared his experience returning to voice Maul in a pre-The Phantom Menace timeline in the Legends book: “I think the big difference for me was that I just made sure that any time he had dialogue that he sounded like he did in The Phantom Menace. When he actually spoke in the book, he was very measured. The point that I was trying to make was that this guy’s been screwed up in his head for a while, but when he opens up to the world, he’s very controlled; he seems calm. So that was part of the fun … psychologically, he can be anywhere I want him to be. But as far as what he presents to the world, it’s that Phantom Menace controlled presence. [Shadow Hunter] is from that era where they all assumed that Maul was just a man of few words, and so his dialogue in the book is very limited, but his internal monologue is very unlimited.”

Compared to scripted material, the main challenge of recording audiobooks is the hours and hours of continuous reading sessions required to cover every chapter of the book. Sam Witwer went above and beyond in Shadow Hunter, not only performing each character with unique voices (some iconic, some new) but also adding background creature sounds and agonizing screams—arguably setting a new standard for Star Wars audiobooks. “Because I don’t really know how to do a narrator voice [laughs], how to really do an audiobook, I just decided, ‘What if I just have a narrative voice that just sort of veers in and out of the characters?’ That’s sort of the plan that I had going in when I read the book.” Witwer continued, “I think people who do audiobooks are incredible at it. They find a way to give you a sense of the characters, a sense of the performance, but they don’t go so far as to completely rob you of your ability to add your imagination to what you’re hearing. When you’re reading a book, it’s all an imaginative experience, you’re imagining what these words are invoking, and these narrators are asking the audience to meet them halfway with the imagination. But as you know, I’m an actor, and that’s why I don’t know how to do the narrator thing, so I just decided to treat it like an audio drama and give the full performance throughout the whole book. I get why they don’t do it like that, it takes longer and is exhausting.”

One of the most fascinating parts of Shadow Hunter is how Darth Maul’s internal monologues are often intruded by his Master, Darth Sidious, in a literal way, with Sam Witwer switching back and forth between the two Sith’s voices. “With Maul having been trained by Sidious, I think the point that I was trying to make was that you know his Master’s voice is constantly ringing in his head. He’s the most influential person in Maul’s life, certainly at this point in his life. He hasn’t been through those events from The Phantom Menace and beyond just yet, so he’s a slightly more hopeful young apprentice at this point,” Witwer explained.

Sam Witwer’s unprecedented performance was not a breeze for the seasoned actor. He explained that the hardest thing about recording Shadow Hunter was the switch between characters’ voices: “When I can stick with one character for hours, it’s the best version of that character. When you concentrate on one voice, you are figuring out all the nuances of what makes that character work, but when you’re bouncing between characters, you lose a lot of those nuances. The good news is that I’ve done Maul for so long that I can just drop into him. Also, we never heard the voices of Darsha, Lorn and I-Five so I didn’t put that kind of pressure on myself.”

Besides Darth Maul, Sam Witwer admitted that he enjoyed voicing I-Five the most in Shadow Hunter: “His voice was a cross between Agent 47 from the Hitman games and KITT from Knight Rider. It’s funny because they said to me, ‘Well, he’s a protocol droid.’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no, he’s gonna sound like this, sorry guys!’ I feel sorry for anyone that’s working on a Star Wars thing with me who isn’t Dave Filoni, because they’re always going to hear some opinion that they don’t want [laughs]. I hope I’m not totally rude about it.”

If you are familiar with that iconic behind-the-scenes moment of Sam Witwer screaming ‘KENOBI’ while recording Rebels, then you know that physicality plays a huge role in his vocal performances. In Shadow Hunter, although Witwer brought the same level of emotionality into the book’s characters, the actor informed us about the limitations of audiobook recording in terms of physicality: “There were for sure some vocally strenuous sessions. I was sitting in front of a microphone moving around as much as I could without making noise.” Witwer added, “When doing a thing where you’re panicked, if you’re not able to move, you start getting lightheaded. If you’re able to move around and run and flail your arms, the energy has a place to go, but if you can’t and you’re just putting into the voice, it’s really hard. There were times I was gasping for air; I felt like I was gonna pass out!”

With his first fully narrated Star Wars audiobook under his belt, will Sam Witwer continue to bring Star Wars characters to life in this format? Witwer said, “I would… you gotta ask me in a few weeks, because we finished that not long ago, and I’m still catching my breath from it! There’s a lot of pressure when it comes to Star Wars … You gotta do it well, you gotta do it really, really well. I would have to make sure I could do it well and have the time to do it. I would do it for the fans, and I would do it because I like Star Wars.”

Sam Witwer’s latest Star Wars project, Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter is available now from your favorite audiobook provider. Make sure to stay in touch with more of his Star Wars (and beyond) projects on Twitter and Instagram, and don’t forget to subscribe to Sam Witwer’s Twitch channel!