He had one line in the epic film that is “The Force Awakens” yet legions of “Star Wars” fans are hailing his brief on-screen appearance. Although Lucasfilm has come out with an actual name and back story for the baton-wielding Stromtrooper who dueled with Finn, who was using the blue light saber for the first time, he will forever be known by the nickname fans have given him instead: TR-8R.
Stormtrooper TR-8R was informally named so because of his one line in the film. As he faces of with Finn outside the ruins of Maz Kanata's cantina, he points aggressively at his former training partner and squad mate and shouts “Traitor!”
He has spawned numerous memes and has become one of the fans' favorites out of all the new characters to come out of the new film even though he was never unmasked.
A 23-year old actor from the U.K., though, had an ill-thought out plan to masquerade as TR-8R online. Using Twitter to pretend that he was the one underneath the Stormtrooper mask.
Alex Rolt wrote on his social media account that he enjoyed shooting the fight scene with fellow Brit actor John Boyega, who played Finn.
He even followed up his original tweet numerous times, after hundreds of fans praised him for the role, saying, “‘Response I’ve had to playing this character has been phenomenal, thank you.”
Initially, Rolt had claimed that he was cast as one of the Knights of Ren and then was selected to face off against Boyega in another scene because of his background in fencing.
Rolt had even gone so far as to give an interview to Crawley News (which has now been taken down), telling them a made-up account of how rehearsals and fight choreography with Boyega went.
However, the gig was up when none other than Lucasfilm itself outed his lie by revealing that Rolt only had a background role in the film and stuntman Liang Yang was the true man who filmed the fight scenes with the stun baton.
Rolt issued numerous apologies on Twitter, claiming that it was a joke that had gone too far and that his career is now “tarnished.”
Rolt's Twitter account has since been deleted but evidence of the fiasco he created still live on as screenshots.
