How Star Wars Hater Bill Burr Got Cast In The Mandalorian

Disney

The following story contains light spoilers for The Mandalorian.

  • Comedian Bill Burr shows up in both the first and second seasons of The Mandalorian as Mayfeld, a mercenary and former imperial sharpshooter.
  • The stand-up has consistently made jokes at the expense of Star Wars and Star Wars fans throughout the years.
  • Burr got the role through a mutual friend with series creator Jon Favreau.

Fans of The Mandalorian shouldn't be surprised, at this point, when a comedian shows up in a galaxy far, far, away. But Bill Burr—whose appearance in the first season of the Star Wars series had long been teased—has now shown up again in Season 2 as the hot-headed mercenary named Mayfeld. And he's become one of the most interesting—and skilled—characters in the whole show.

Burr's recurring role shouldn't be a shock to fans of the Disney+ series—SNL star Horatio Sanz, stand-up Brian Posehn, and general legend Amy Sedaris have also made recurring appearances—but it's fun to see nonetheless. While he was mostly at odds with Mando during his first appearance in Season 1's big heist episode, his Season 2 episode dove deeper into the character.

Fans saw that Mayfeld isn't just a cold mercenary, but a human with feelings—and quite the skilled sharpshooter, too. Oh, and he's the only living thing who's seen Din Djarin without his helmet on—that feels like an important thing to mention, right?

But just because Burr has a role in the first live-action Star Wars series doesn't mean he's become a fan (because he still probably hasn't). In fact, he's often made fun of the series and its fans.

“I was just too old by the time I saw Star Wars,” Burr said during an appearance on The Daily Beast's The Last Laugh podcast. “It was geared towards kids and I was watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High by the time it came out.”

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In a 2015 appearance on Conan, the night before the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Burr said that he missed the original Star Wars when it first came out, but when he finally saw it years later ("when I was like 27"), it felt like a “cheesy self-help book put in outer space with, like, Muppets.”

“Why does it matter?" he rhetorically asked about fans who at the time were waiting in lines. "Why is it this important?”

the mandalorian bill burr mayfeldDisneyBurr appears as Mayfeld once again in The Mandalorian Season 2.


Not even four years later, though, and Burr has a key role in the first-ever live-action Star Wars series, playing a character who spends quite a bit of time pointing a blaster at Pedro Pascal's Mandalorian. He's the leader of a larger team of mercenaries, and has a space cannon mounted on his shoulder. Sounds like it might be just cool enough to convince someone to become a Star Wars fan. Or maybe not.


So how did this Star Wars hater find his way into such a high-profile Star Wars project? Well, the story is pretty straightforward, actually. Burr's latest special, Paper Tiger (which debuted last month on Netflix), was directed by Mike Binder—a mutual friend of The Mandalorian's showrunner Jon Favreau. At one point, Burr ran into Favreau at a birthday party, and, as Burr described on an interview on The Rich Eisen Show, Favreau said he had a role that he thought he'd be a good fit for.

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“I ran into Jon [Favreau] somewhere, and he was like, Hey, I’m doing this Star Wars thing, would you wanna do something?” Burr said. “And I was like, I kinda always made fun of it." Burr seemed concerned that the optics of him joining a Star Wars project would look kind of iffy, but Favreau saw it a different way. "I think that’d be funny. I think your fans would get a kick out of the fact, if you went into that thing," he recalled Favreau saying. "Then I went in there, and they were shooting it like a Spaghetti Western. And I was immediately so psyched to be a part of it.”

As Burr describes on the Last Laugh podcast, it was his wife, Nia Hill, who convinced him to take the opportunity. “She gives the best career advice,” he says. “Not that I was going to say no to Jon Favreau [who also directed Iron Man and The Lion King]. I don’t give a shit what he was doing, I was going to say yes.”

It's actually not even Burr's first brush with dark prestige television, either—you may or may recall his recurring role in Breaking Bad as one of Saul Goodman's fixers, Kuby. He appeared in five episodes during that show's run, typically taking part in some good old fashioned intimidation, or other criminal dirty work. Not quite the foul-mouthed comedy that his fans may be accustomed to.

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But now, with Burr's Mandalorian character established, and seemingly getting more and more fleshed out by the season, the comedian might just be coming around. Hell, you never know—maybe Mayfeld could have his own Disney+ series sooner or later.

Play Iconpreview for Everything to Know About “The Mandalorian” Season 2

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