Chewbacca Actor Peter Mayhew Duels With Airport Security Over Lightsaber Cane—and Wins!

Star Wars star called on the Twitterverse to help him with a Jedi mind trick so he could move along

By Josh Grossberg Jun 10, 2013 4:13 PMTags
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For Peter Mayhew, it was an "Imperial entanglement" of the TSA sort.

The British actor famed for playing Chewbacca in the Star Wars films was flying from Denver last week back to his home planet of Kashyyk in Texas when he ended up having a run-in with airport security who—acting like storm troopers, apparently —tried to confiscate his lightsaber-appearing cane. 

"@AmericanAir won't lalow me through the airport with me cane! Can I get a retweet?" he vented Monday morning via his official Twitter page, PeterMayhew@TheWookieeRoars.

Thankfully, the Twitter force was strong with this one.

Shortly after he sent the tweet, the 69-year-old Mayhew quickly clarified, "@tsa rather…Though after I tweeted they gave it back :)" 

The 7-foot-3-inch thespian, who was in town for Denver's Comic Con, went about his merry way after airport security took Han Solo's advice and "let the wookiee win," as one of his followers quipped later. 

"Giant man need giant cane.. small cane snap like toothpick.... besides.. my light saber cane is just cool.. I would miss it," he said.

Mayhew also suggested to his followers that there's a lesson to be learned from his experience: "Magic words to TSA are not "please" or "thank you".. It's "Twitter".. cane released to go home."

Lastly, he expressed his gratitude to American Airlines for their assistance, tweeting, "I'm a million-miler on American and they are a class act."

The Wookiee roars indeed.

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