'The Rise of Skywalker' star Oscar Isaac on the 'Star Wars' actor who gave a heartfelt goodbye after 42 years
After three "Star Wars" films, Oscar Isaac will take one last stand as the resistance fighter pilot in "The Rise of Skywalker."
"It's pretty surreal to finally be on the other end of it," Isaac told "Good Morning America," reflecting on the decades of "Star Wars" storylines after nine films.
On the last day of filming, Isaac, who plays Poe Dameron, said he took a moment to say goodbye to the crew and cast but quickly handed the microphone to someone who had been there from the beginning.
"I got a little choked up and then I realized that standing right there was Anthony Daniels ready to say goodbye as well," he explained of the actor who plays droid C-3PO. "I've been a part of these three movies, but he's been in every single 'Star Wars' film. So I quickly was like, 'actually you know what maybe you should be talking,' and I handed over the microphone."
"To see him say goodbye to this saga, I don't think there's any other actor that's had such a unique commitment to a character like Anthony Daniels," Isaac said.
The highly-anticipated final installment of the Skywalker saga has a little "throwback vibe to the old films," Isaac said, referring to his on-screen chemistry with Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey.
"I think what J.J.'s able to do so well is capture the spirit of those old films and find a way to make them new again," he explained of Abrams, the movie's director.
And that spirit comes through more than ever thanks to a high-tech solution that brings a pivotal character from the original films -- Princess Leia.
The director previously told "GMA" that he and his team utilized unused footage of the late Carrie Fisher, who played the iconic princess, in order to incorporate her character one last time.
"We realized there were probably five or six scenes that we never used and we went back and looked at the footage and realized we could tell the story, create scenes with her, but we did it in a really interesting way where we used her footage and everything in the scene was written around, built around, lit around what we had of her," Abrams said.
"I really appreciate that they found a way to say goodbye to Princess Leia in a really beautiful way -- and the way that J.J. and the whole Lucasfilm team was able to really give her her due in this last film," Isaac said of her posthumous appearance in "The Rise of Skywalker."
The actor, 40, said he remembers Fisher fondly and called her "a remarkable human being."
"She was such an example of how to be bold and not apologize for being who you are and [I] just loved working with her," he said.
"Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" is produced by Lucasfilm, a division of Disney, ABC's parent company.
