Entertainment
How The World’s Most Famous Stoner Accidentally Became Part Of Star Wars History
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When The Mandalorian and Grogu came out, it offered several surprises for Star Wars fans. This included Mando getting a new Razorcrest (a big upgrade over that old Naboo starfighter) and finding a new purpose: hunting down sleazy Imperial warlords on behalf of the New Republic. Plus, it was undeniably cool to see Sigourney Weaver suit up and hop in an X-Wing (in space, no one can hear her enemies scream!). However, the biggest surprise is that Rotta the Hutt didn’t speak in his native language. Instead, he spent pretty much the entire film speaking English (or Galactic Basic, if you want to be technical), which was jarring whenever he was onscreen.
Many fans thought the sight of a Hutt speaking their own language was more than a bit surreal. Still, it made a kind of sense. Rotta was voiced by The Bear star Jeremy Allen White, and it would have been pretty stupid to hire him just to have the acclaimed actor make Hutt noises. However, what really weirded out the Star Wars fandom is that White didn’t really sound like himself throughout The Mandalorian and Grogu. According to fans all over the internet, he sounded more like another very famous actor: everyone’s favorite carefree stoner, Seth Rogen!
Smoke’em If You Got’em
Who is Rotta the Hutt, exactly? In this famous galaxy far, far away, he’s the son of infamous crime lord Jabba the Hutt, and someone Din Djarin ends up helping out in The Mandalorian and Grogu. In our own galaxy, it’s more accurate to say that this Hutt is Dave Filoni’s baby. He included Rotta as a nasty, farting Huttling in the 2008 Clone Wars movie and brought him back for this latest Star Wars movie. Rotta is all grown up now and can speak for himself (which is a big step up from being a burbling monster). Unfortunately, every single thing that comes out of his slimy mouth is insanely distracting.
Why is that? Rotta the Hutt is voiced by Jeremy Allen White, which seemed like an insane bit of stunt casting. Nonetheless, the actor has a fairly distinctive voice in The Bear, so Star Wars fans kept an open mind about his performance. However, even superfans of the actor ended up being disappointed because White sounds nothing like himself in The Mandalorian and Grogu, presumably because Disney put some kind of filter over his voice. That would have been bad enough, but according to countless fans on social media, White’s voice sounds distractingly like Seth Rogen!
All Too Human
The problems with White’s voice acting are compounded by the fact that Rotta the Hutt sounds so weirdly human. He doesn’t sound like Seth Rogen doing an alien voice or anything, which would make more sense for someone voicing one of the most fearsome creatures in the galaxy. No, The Bear star sounds almost exactly like Rogen in his various stoner comedies like Knocked Up and Pineapple Express. Because of this, fans have transformed already-bad lines like Rotta’s “I’m my own man” into hilarious memes, underscoring the fact that The Mandalorian and Grogu is one big joke.
So far, it’s not entirely clear why Disney wanted their stunt-cast actor to sound like the world’s biggest stoner. Was this meant to make him more relatable compared to his frog-eating slaver of a father, or were they counting on his lines being turned into funny TikToks and Reels? Whatever the reasoning (if there was any real reason at all), this decision was fairly insane. It could be worse, though. In The Clone Wars, we meet Ziro the Hutt, Rotta’s great-uncle, who sounds exactly like Truman Capote. That was even more distracting than Jeremy Allen White’s performance, turning what could have been an interesting new Star Wars character into a weirdly offensive gay stereotype.
More Like “No, Chef”
Chances are, we’ll never know why Disney hired Jeremy Allen White to voice Rotta the Hutt and then made the actor sound like the most famous stoner in the world. It’s a decision that makes the film memorable in all the worst ways, and one of the biggest criticisms of The Mandalorian and Grogu is that Rotta’s voice is so distractingly weird and human. Honestly, I just kept expecting him to ditch Mando and go buy a Hutt-load of spice from an alien voiced by James Franco.
At the very least, we’re already getting funny memes out of this. If the rehabilitation of The Phantom Menace shows us anything, it’s that Star Wars fans can meme themselves into thinking that anything is good. In the meantime, you’ve got a ready-made punchline whenever you watch The Mandalorian and Grogu with your friends. Just wait for Rotta to open his mouth for the first time, make eye contact with your closest buddy, and drop this banger on them: “somehow, Seth Rogen returned.”