Photo Credit: Lucasfilm
A veteran actor is stepping into one of cinema’s biggest shoes. He has opened up about taking on Harrison Ford’s most iconic Star Wars role as Han Solo. The actor revealed his experience with dubbing Ford’s famous role into Welsh for a special project.
Matthew Rhys and Liam McIntyre sat with ComingSoon to promote their new animated series, Golden Axe. Rhys was asked about his experience of voicing Han Solo in the Welsh dub of the first Star Wars film.
“So I had to dub Harrison Ford’s performance, which seemed like—actually, not seemed—it was sacrilegious,” the 51-year-old said, calling the experience “a lot.” The Welsh actor noted that voice work offers “a great freedom to it that I think isn’t there when you’re on camera.”
Titled Star Wars: Gobaith Newydd, it is the first-ever Welsh-language dub of 1977’s Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Lucasfilm will release the Welsh version on Christmas Day 2026 across S4C television and digital platforms.
Who else has played Han Solo in Star Wars besides Harrison Ford?
Harrison Ford famously played the smuggler-turned-hero in the original Star Wars trilogy and later films. While Ford’s role was killed off in The Force Awakens (2015), he made a brief cameo appearance in 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker.
Alden Ehrenreich played the younger version of the iconic smuggler in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story. It explores the origins of Han Solo and Chewbacca as they join a heist in the criminal underworld, set a decade before the events of 1977’s Star Wars film.
On the animation side, voice actors like Kiff VandenHeuvel and Ross Marquand have voiced the character in various LEGO specials and animated appearances.
Additionally, Matthew Rhys joined that list by dubbing Ford’s role in Welsh as part of Lucasfilm’s language preservation effort. The studio previously made a Navajo dub, in which Solo was played by James Junes.
Originally reported on ComingSoon.
