6 Small Roles With Hugely Interesting Stories Behind Them

Buoyed on, Jensen continued his search and hit up casting agencies, directors, fan forums, and genealogy websites, with no luck. That is, until a family member emailed him out to say that BoShek was played by Frances Alfred Basil Tomlin, who it turns out also played a stormtrooper. Tragically, Tomlin passed away in 2004, when Attack Of The Clones was the most recent Star Wars movie. Let's all pour a glass of ... be right back, Googling "star wars drinks" ... uhh, Wookie-wango in his name.

Although his lines amount to little more than sci-fi baby talk, Diesel got a special script for GOTG 1 and 2 containing the translations of what Groot is saying to help him properly convey the necessary emotions of each scene. It would, after all, be rather noticeable if Groot spent one any of the big feels-inducing moments shouting in a tone normally reserved for the Grootified version of "Turn Down For What." (Before you ask, there's no copy of this script anywhere, thanks to its circulation being restricted to only Vin Diesel and James Gunn.)

The in-house confusion about MJ's appearance (remember, the anonymity meant that this episode couldn't be marketed as having the best cameo ever) resulted in a new rule that any celebrity cameos must be credited properly. This probably works really well for the producers, but nowadays ... well, if you were cameoing on The Simpsons, would you want your cool celebrity friends to know about that? Exactly.

And while we're on the subject of The Simpsons ...

Another thing that the episode had going for it was a guest appearance by Leonard Nimoy, but it wasn't always supposed to be him. The producers ruled out asking Nimoy to appear on the show early on because they figured they couldn't get him, so they settled for a more affordable Star Trek actor, George Takei. Mr. Sulu accepted the role and demanded several script changes, only to drop out at the last minute. Why? Because he had a side gig as a member of the board of the Southern California Rapid Transit District. Apparently, Takei decided that appearing in an episode wherein a con man steals the town's money and delivers a substandard service would be an even bigger insult to public transportation than, well, California's public transportation.

After Takei dropped out, the producers figured they might as well try their luck and ask Nimoy if he wanted to step in. To their surprise, he said yes (at which point they probably said, "Dammit, wish we'd tried Shatner"). It's hard to say who came out better, considering that Nimoy's cameo is consistently regarded as one of the show's best and, as you know, nobody has disrespected public transportation since 1993, thanks to Takei.

20th TelevisionMay the Force be with them both.

The man behind Al, Richard Karn, was an apartment manager and aspiring actor who had recently moved to LA when he got his big break in the form of a ... traffic ticket for rolling through a stop sign. Karn was forced into attending traffic school, where he often found himself sitting next to an agent looking for someone to appear on this pokey show about a pokey DIY show. Originally, Karn wasn't to play Al, just some random guy whose main character schtick was "an ulcer that flared up every time Tim did something stupid."

ABC StudiosWe're assuming he would have been dead by episode two.

The role of Al had already been taken by Stephen Tobolowsky (known for Groundhog Day, Silicon Valley, and Groundhog Day), but he had to drop out to appear in a movie, leaving the part wide open for Karn to take and make his own. So there you have it, kids: If you want to make it big in showbiz, the two paths are "selling cocaine" and "breaking as many traffic laws as possible."

It wasn't easy to do this for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that ... how do we put this? The fact that society is racist as balls?

Despite getting his start in showbiz as a professional impersonator on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life, the only roles that were open to actors like Hong were racist caricatures come to life. Instead of sucking it up and resigning himself to playing Chinese Waiter #2 for the rest of his life, Hong decided to do something about it. When he and several other Asian actors were offered roles in Confessions Of An Opium Eater as "prostitutes and opium eaters," they held a sit-in in the director's office and tried to reason with him -- complaints that said director ignored in favor of making the movie anyway. Unperturbed, Hong became president of the Asian American Pacific Artists guild, and began a letter-writing campaign to studio heads imploring them to start envisioning Asian people as, um, people.

If studios weren't offering Asian actors roles, Hong decided to make up some instead, and so teamed up with future Oscar nominee Mako Iwamatsu to put together a stage production of Rashomon. The play ran for two years, and the resulting theater company has continued working for half a century and counting. The troupe's success helped Hong get better parts, although he was still getting racist pushback during this time. And even though things aren't exactly perfect right now, he says, "After 50 to 60 years, things are starting to look better. I never thought it would take this long. At least I'm alive to see it, but it took this long to get this far."

Man, no one tell him about the internet.

Adam Wears is on Twitter and Facebook, and has a newsletter about depressing history that you should definitely subscribe to.

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