WATCH: Sam Jackson explains why Mace Windu had a purple light saber

The contest hasn’t been competitive for some time, so we might as well call it: Sam Jackson is the most entertaining interview. Hot off his Reddit monologue contest, Jackson dropped by The Graham Norton Show, where Norton asked Jackson to tell the story of why he has a purple light saber in the Star Wars prequels. I always assumed the answer was “to really drive home the penis metaphor,” but to hear Jackson tell it, this is not so.

“We had this big arena, this fight scene [in the second prequel] with all these Jedi and they’re fightin’ or whatever. And I was like, well shit I wanna be able to find myself in this big ol’ scene. So I said to George, ‘You think maybe I can get a purple light saber?’

And he’s like, ‘Light sabers are green or light sabers are red.’

‘Yeah, but I want a purple one.’ I’m like the second baddest Jedi in the universe next to Yoda. He said ‘Well let me think about it.’

And when I came back to do reshoots, he said I want to show you something, this has already caused a shitstorm online. And he had the purple light saber! And I was like yeah! And so I could find myself in that big fight scene. There was like 300 light sabers, but ‘There I am, right there.'”

Oh sure, leave it to the first black Jedi to get handed his light saber and immediately ask, “YEAH, BUT DOES IT COME IN GRAPE?”

Aw, I love you, obvious jokes. On a more serious note, how lame is it that it took an actor to finally ask, “Hey, wouldn’t it be a little cooler if, say, in this scene, we could actually tell the people fighting apart from each other?” Makes me wish Samuel L. Jackson had been in Transformers.

[See also: Every way Sam Jackson has spelled ‘motherf*cker’ since 2011]

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