Mark Hamill, J.J. Abrams Join Hilarious ‘Nightcap’ Season Finale

Lawrence Yee
TV
TV

If you haven’t been watching Nightcap, Wednesday’s Season 2 finale — featuring Mark Hamill and J.J. Abrams — is definitely worth checking out.

The Star Wars icons will play themselves on the Pop TV comedy, which centers around a talent booker named Staci (Ali Wentworth), who works on a fictional late night show called Nightcap with Jimmy. On Wednesday’s finale, the show finds itself in danger, and Staci calls upon Hamill and Abrams.

FANDOM caught up with Wentworth to discuss the finale and how fun it was to shoot with Luke Skywalker and the director of Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

FANDOM: Tell us how you were able to get Mark and J.J. on the show.

Wentworth: J.J. and I have known each other for 25 years; he’s a very close friend of mine. I’ve always wanted to work with J.J. on camera because we have such an innate rapport as friends and I asked him to it. Then I reached out to Mark Hamill and said, “We’d love you to come on to do a funny cameo.” And he said “absolutely.” We all had a ball!

FANDOM: How did the crew react to having two icons on the set?

WENTWORTH: My whole crew geeked out. We’ve had Sarah Jessica Parker and Mariska Hargitay and they were a professional crew. But with Mark and J.J. they could barely do their job. They were dropping cable, spilling their coffee, etc. They lost it.

Mark Hamill replicates his famous hood reveal on Nightcap

FANDOM: What can you tell us about the season finale?

Wentworth: When you come on Nightcap, you get to come on the show and play a funny version of yourself. With this season finale, J.J. and I were giggling a lot. And Mark does that great ode to Star Wars (see video above) and was “yeah, let’s do it.”

FANDOM: Josh Gad famously tormented Hamill’s costar Daisy Ridley to spill details on Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. Was there anybody on the cast that tried to grill Mark about the sequel?

Wentworth: “Oh my God … constantly! I would see one of the key grips be like, ‘Hey man, I have a question for you.’ I must’ve overheard Mark reply ten times, ‘Oh, I can’t talk about that’ or ‘I can’t tell you.’ I almost ran around with a broom hitting the crew saying ‘Stop!'”

I think it’s very empowering for Mark to have this information that people want. his wife was there and his daughter was there. Considering he is Luke Skywalker, he is very down to earth, taking cell phone pics, etc.

FANDOM: Are you and your husband [Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos] big Star Wars fans?

Wentworth: “I am a BIG Star Wars fan as is my husband. He works at ABC Disney and Star Wars is a big part of the the ABC family. I also think that J.J. has a bromance on George so I said, ‘Come shoot nightcap and then you and George can go out lunch.'”

FANDOM: How did George react to Mark’s cameo?

Wentworth: “George couldn’t believe it. Last night I did Fallon and even Jimmy Fallon was like, ‘How did you do that?’ Obviously, network television would pay millions of dollars for that moment. And when you’re the underdog, when you’re this little show and you’re a nice show, it all came together organically. There wasn’t any ‘I don’t know if we can do that’ or ‘let me call the network.’ It would be almost impossible to do anywhere else due to the red tape.”

FANDOM: Anything else you can share?

Wentworth: “The interesting thing was afterwards J.J. was like, ‘You can cut me out, it’s okay.’ He was very insecure. I replied, ‘Are you kidding me?’ YOU’RE insecure about MY little show?” [laughs]

Check out Mark Hamill and J.J. Abrams on the Season 2 finale of Nightcap Wednesday night at 8pm/7 pm C on Pop TV. And catch another hilarious preview below.

Lawrence Yee
Lawrence is Editor in Chief of FANDOM. He grew up loving X-Men, Transformers, and Japanese-style role playing games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. First-person shooters make him incredibly nauseous.