Star Wars: Miles Teller only watched original trilogy because he had Han Solo spin-off audition coming up

'I was like, 'I should check this out'’

Harrison Ford as Han Solo (Peter Mayhew/Twitter)

With Star Wars: The Force Awakens having broken box office records around the world - having quickly become the third highest grossing film of all time - it seems like most of the world must have seen Star Wars at some stage in their lives.

However, one young actor hadn’t seen the original trilogy until just months before he was due to audition for the titular role in the upcoming Han Solo spin-off.

Speaking on the happysadconfused podcast, Miles Teller - best known for his roles in Fantastic Four and Whiplash - revealed he only watched the films because he thought “I should check this out” before auditioning to play the fan favourite.

“I had never even seen any of the original Star Wars movies until maybe a month or a couple weeks before my first audition because I was like, ‘I should check this out’” he said.

“It holds up. I just love Harrison Ford. I think that’s a great character. I love his brand, I mean so many guys would’ve played that part so wrong and he has humor at the right times.

“Harrison Ford is a very big actor, when you see the facial expressions and the things he does he goes big, but he’s just always the coolest guy in the room and he’s got all of those great qualities.”

Phil Lord and Chris Miller will be directing the upcoming Star Wars anthology film, which currently has three actors in talks to star as the titular rogue according to reports: Alden Ehrenreich, Taron Egerton and Jack Reynor. Perhaps Teller’s admission that he had never seen the films didn’t do him any favours with the directing pair who are self confessed massive Star Wars fans.

In the same interview, Teller also spoke about the failed Fantastic Four reboot: “People think that when you make something like a Fantastic Four that doesn’t do well, people think ‘Oh you phoned it in’ and it couldn’t be more untrue.

“You work harder on the bad films, or the films that turn out maybe not the way you intended, because something’s not working. And I thought it was kind of unjustly critiqued that way; there are even bigger bombs if you’re looking at how much money went into the production and what they reaped back.

“But I think it’s unfortunate a movie like that becomes a scarlet letter on a resume when so many talented people worked really hard and maybe a handful of people took it in a negative direction. But so many people worked really hard on that that are so talented.”

Other cast members from the Marvel film have spoken out about the film’s production, wit Michael B Jordan previously describing the re-shoots as ‘tough’ and saying how many things were changed while filming.