Star Wars has featured plenty of celebrity cameos but, as Princes William and Harry know all too well, not all of them make the cut, no matter how big their star power.

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Take That singer Gary Barlow cameoed as a blink-and-you'll-miss-him resistance pilot in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but he's recently revealed that he was due to play a much bigger role in the franchise.

Speaking on Ayda Field's podcast, Barlow revealed that he was originally set to sing in a bar during the same film but that the role was given to an alien (that's show business for you).

Speaking about his cameo, he said on Postcards from the Edge, "I got to keep the outfit. If you blinked, you'd miss me. It's where they are in the trenches."

However, he continued, "It's a bigger story than this. So we get a call from Star Wars saying, 'We've got a part for Gary in the next movie. There's a bar and we would need a singer, and he's gonna be in the film,' and I couldn't speak.

"So I got a real attitude and starting treating people like... s***. I thought, 'This is it, I've made it!' So anyway, about a week before we were shooting, they came back saying, 'We're really sorry but the storyline has changed and it's now going to be an alien'."

Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Star Wars: The Last Jedi Lucasfilm

That wasn't the end of the story, however, as the Star Wars execs got back to Barlow offering him a different cameo role - and even organised a FaceTime with Mark Hamill himself.

"They rang back and said, 'We'll give you an extra part, would that be good payment?' and I was like, 'Too right!' I wasn't that bothered really but I was determined to get into Star Wars, so I turned up and because they cancelled me out the movie, they laid the red carpet out," he said.

"I toured the Millennium Falcon, and then the director comes in and goes, 'Mark Hamill was meant to meet you today but instead we've got him on FaceTime' and I'm like, 'Oh Mark, I'm so sorry you don't have to do this'."

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Authors

Flora CarrDrama Writer, RadioTimes.com
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