I’m sure it’s been said before, but Mark Hamill just seems like such a nice guy. Refreshingly normal, I guess. I think it’s because he found a way to survive in Hollywood beyond playing Luke Skywalker – he was a jobbing, scrambling, lean-times working actor for decades, and it’s given him some capacity for empathy and humanity. That’s what I was thinking about as I read this Daily Beast interview with Hamill, which was conducted a week after Election Day. I imagine we’ll be getting similar interviews in the weeks to come, as actors and actresses are trying to assess the damage in real time, just like everybody else. You can read Hamill’s interview here. Some highlights:

His thoughts on the election: “I’m in total denial. I’m glad I have [the show] to take my mind off what’s going on. Because if you look at what’s being assembled for our government it’s like, yikes. It’s a who’s-who of really despicable people. It’s tempting to say, ‘Well, I’m moving to Canada, I can’t stand it.’ But in other ways, it’s a challenge to stay and defend your country and do what you think is right and not retreat and hide under the covers. It’s not gonna be easy, that’s for sure.”

He grew up in a Republican household: The son of a U.S. naval officer whom he describes as a “big Nixon guy,” Hamill, a card-carrying Democrat, sympathizes with those whose Thanksgiving gatherings turned into political dogfights this year—inevitable when “half the people in the country are thrilled and delighted and half the people are disgusted, repulsed, and embarrassed.” (His three now-grown kids, he notes, “turned out alright.” As for himself, “like Stephanie Miller and Ronald Reagan Jr., I fell far from the tree.”)

He stands by the message of the Star Wars films: “It sounds corny, but the Star Wars films were incredibly optimistic films. They talked about doing good just because it helps others and being selfless and understanding your place in the universe. Beyond being entertaining, I hope that’s a message that kids still respond to. Because I still believe that. I still believe all those tenets of ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’ and so forth.”

[From The Daily Beast]

I’m sort of enjoying all of the people who, faced with our first fascist autocrat president, have decided to stick around and still fight the good fight. That’s how I feel too – of course I was and I am depressed and grief-stricken for our country. But I’m also pissed off and disgusted and I want to do my part to make sure that President Trump goes down in flames and hopefully doesn’t take the country with him.

Photos courtesy of WENN.