When Ron Howard blasted a reporter for dragging Jake Lloyd’s performance in The Phantom Menace

I realize this story has out there for a while, but I’d never heard of it and it’s still interesting, so let’s begin.

The year is 1999. The world is on the cusp of watching Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, George Lucas long-awaited return to that galaxy far, far away. Ewan McGregor was playing a young Obi-Wan Kenobi, and a young unknown named Jake Lloyd was playing Anakin Skywalker, the boy who would grow up to be Darth Vader. Honestly, it’s hard to conceive of how big the buzz was at that time.

Among the many anticipating the movie was Newsweek reporter Nancy Cooper, who wrote a piece titled “Buzz Wars, Episode One,” where she cited “insiders” on The Phantom Menace who were critical of Lloyd’s performance. And who should read this piece but former child actor and acclaimed director Ron Howard? And he did not like it at all, based on this letter he wrote directly to Cooper, on Imagine Entertainment letterhead:

"The letter Ron Howard sent to Newsweek after an article ‘critiqued’ Jake Lloyd’s performance in Star Wars E1 (Phantom Menace). Jake was 9 years old at the time. from StarWars"

There are a bunch of things to take away here. First, this must have been right before letter-writing stopping being a regular thing. Although if I wanted to really tell someone off, I think a physical letter would be more forceful than an email, so maybe that was on purpose.

Second, it makes sense that Howard would be offended on behalf of Lloyd, and not just because Howard was a child star himself on the set of The Andy Griffith Show way back when, but also because he’s a Star Wars fan: remember that he stepped in to direct Solo: A Star Wars Story after original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller left the project.

Third, it ends up that powerful people really do read what the press is saying, which is both empowering and intimidating. Watch what you say online, people.

As for the content of the letter itself, I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether Cooper — who’s still with Newsweek, so far as I can tell — was right to report on criticisms of Lloyd’s acting before the movie came out. Howard is dinging her here for writing something that may end up harming the impressionable nine-year-old boy should he stumble across it, and I can’t help but think how much worse this problem has gotten in the years since, when anyone can say any hurtful thing they want on social media about anyone, inside information or no.

Unfortunately, however much Howard may have loved Lloyd’s performance in the movie, after it came out, the poor kid was piled on by the press and fans alike, and based on interviews Lloyd himself has given, it sounds like he had a terrible experience. Looking back, the situation with Lloyd seems like a clear precedent for the kind of online public shaming that happens on the regular nowadays. I think we have a while to go before we set useful boundaries when it comes to that stuff.

This has been your Star Wars history minute. Enjoy your Thursday.

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