Ian McDiarmid on the Easiest and Most Difficult Parts of His Character to Play: “I suppose it’s easy to play, I think, a hypercritical politician with a smiling face. It’s also quite gratifying. Most difficult, certainly for me, were the all action sequences. The sequence fighting Sam [Jackson] and persuading Hayden [Christensen] to send him through the window. But you’ll see from the DVD we had our problems on that day. They weren’t big ones and they were happily surmounted.
I’d learned some stuff and I worked with Nick [Gillard], and when George saw it on the set it wasn’t what he needed. And interestingly enough what he needed was more of me. I’d rather thought he’d want less of me. But he wanted not just my facial expressions, which would have been obvious and he was not terribly interested in replacing faces unless it was absolutely necessary, he wanted my energy. We had make a few changes just like that. And to somebody who’s not experienced at that kind of fighting – fighting at that rate – that was a great learning process. But it was good and it was exciting, but it was difficult.
Fighting Frank [Oz]– fighting Yoda – was a joy. And I then got to experience the full beauty of CGI. In other words, actors in battle with invisible people. Although it was a very precise choreographic sequence - it would have to be, you’ve seen it – which we did do. Then I sensed, in fact George asked for it in a very polite way, he wanted a few sort of improvised strokes. So basically I did a rap to thin air at the end of the choreographed sequence and then collapsed with exhaustion and hysterical laughter on the floor. I don’t know if any of those movements are in the final cut. …That wasn’t the difficult, that was great fun.
The greatest fun of all is a big action sequence, which you probably wouldn’t think of as such, and that’s the scene in the opera. Hayden and I sitting together…and just talking as the opera was playing. But interestingly enough, people have told me this and I was very pleased to hear it, it’s as full of action in a way as any sequence involving spaceships or lightsaber fights because it’s thought in action. It is a kind of saber battle but of the intellect. And the scene was a joy to do because I get to work with Hayden and we were with each every second of the day in our eyes, which is how actors really like to act.”
