Star Wars: Here's What Jabba The Hutt Looks Like In Real Life

Formidable though he may be, Jabba the Hutt is not exactly the most powerful or ruthless villain in the "Star Wars" franchise. He's easily among the grossest ones, though, and he's definitely the single biggest villain in that galaxy far, far away who's also obviously a special effect. So how then can we show what Jabba looks in real life? Well, it turns out that the Hutt used to look very different at one point. 

Behind-the-scenes footage shows that the character was once just a smug-looking human dude wearing dark furs and an attitude. He was portrayed by an actor called Declan Mulholland, and this is him playing Jabba in a scene fans of the "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope" special edition might find familiar:

Mulholland was never supposed to appear as Jabba onscreen. The original Jabba the Hutt scene that was cut from "Star Wars" got scrapped due to production challenges, but it was meant to feature a stop-motion Jabba — who was going to replace Mulholland in the finished version — confronting Han Solo (Harrison Ford) about the smuggler's debts. Ultimately, Lucas wasn't able to add the "proper" Jabba in time and decided to scrap the scene until the special edition, where the scene was added with a CGI version of the Hutt gangster as he appears in "Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi." 

If the name Declan Mulholland seems familiar to fans, chances are that "Star Wars" isn't the only sci-fi franchise they've seen him in. He appeared in a great many movies and TV shows over the course of his 35-year screen acting career, and while he worked in all sorts of projects, he developed a habit of turning up regularly in genre projects in the 1970s. 

Mulholland played Clark in the 1972 "Doctor Who" two-parter "The Sea Devils," and returned in 1978 for "The Androids of Tara" story arc as a different character, Till. He played Olson in the 1974 dinosaur fantasy film "The Land That Time Forgot," and had minor roles in "Quatermass" and Vincent Price's "Theatre of Blood." The 1980s saw him back in more conventional roles, but not before he played a robber in Terry Gilliam's high-concept 1981 fantasy film "Time Bandits." Mulholland, also a well-regarded stage actor who specialized in Shakespeare's comedies, passed away in 1999 at 66 years old.

When it came time for Jabba to make his official big screen debut in "Return of the Jedi," the monstrous practical effects mobster was operated by a team of several people — including one who also puppeted Jabba's minion and potential future "The Mandalorian" star Salacious B. Crumb. 

The three chief puppeteers were David Barclay, Toby Philpott, and Mike Edmonds, and the first two men (seen above) sat inside Jabba' s head and torso to move his face, hands, and body with intricate control levers and their own body movements. Meanwhile, Edmonds took care of the tail and other puppeteers assisted in other areas. The intricate setup enabled the team to control the creature right down to the finest points of its facial expressions. One team member even smoked a cigar when they needed to create the subtle pipe smoke Jabba exhales.

The interiors of the Jabba the Hutt puppet look surprisingly spacious for what they are, while the many pipes and gadgets make it seem like the operators are inside a spacecraft — and considering the alien crime lord they're bringing to life with their equipment, this isn't all that far removed from the truth. All in all, seeing how much effort ultimately went into the character is as heartwarming as Jabba himself is loathsome.