Freddie Prinze Jr. Explains Why His 5-Year-Old Daughter Charlotte "Loves Bad Guys"—Watch Now!

Actor promotes Star Wars Rebels on The Queen Latifah Show

By Zach Johnson Oct 03, 2014 2:45 PMTags

Little Charlotte Prinze has an affinity for the Dark Side.

Actor Freddie Prinze Jr. (flanked by R2D2 and Chopper) stopped by The Queen Latifah Show Thursday to promote his new animated TV series; he voices Jedi survivor Kanan Jarrus in Disney Channel's Star Wars Rebels. Until recently, he'd tried to keep his role hidden from his daughter with wife Sarah Michelle Gellar. "I tried to keep it a secret because I wanted to still be magical and special," he said. "If you're a magician, you don't want to show your kid the rabbit thing doesn't work. You want it to be special."

"All the kids at her school ruined that right away," he said. "They saw commercials and their parents tell them and they're like, 'Your dad's a Jedi!' So, Charlotte comes home and she goes, 'Daddy, what is this show? I wanna watch this show that you're on! Why didn't you tell me about the show?' I'm like, 'Baby, it's not on yet. I was going to surprise you.' She's like, 'Everybody knows this!' She's 5! She's 5 years old. 'Everybody knows about this show but me!' She sounds like girls I knew in high school, you know what I mean? Like, 'I can't believe you watched Twin Peaks without me! Oh, my God!' It's just like, 'What? Calm down! There's a Sesame Street on. Relax.' But she's so hardcore and she loves bad guys, man."

"She's going to be a Sith Lord one day," the 38-year-old father of two joked of his firstborn daughter. "She sees bad guys in any cartoon and the first thing she asks is, 'Why don't they have to do what anyone tells them?' It's the first thing she says—the first thing she says! I literally had an argument with her. We were watching the Disney parade—the Christmas parade—and Darth Vader's walking in the parade, which for an old school fan is very weird because he was walking next to Aladdin and they were cool and he wasn't force choking him or anything. She goes, 'Is he a bad guy?' I said, 'Yeah, he's a bad guy.' She goes, 'Does he get to do whatever he wants?' I had this father moment where I'm willing to lie to a child, so I said, 'No, he can't do whatever he wants.' And she goes, 'Well, who's his boss?' I said, 'The emperor!' She said, 'Who's the emperor?' I said, 'I am the emperor—and that's all you need to know!'"

Freddie hasn't let Charlotte watch George Lucas' original trilogy yet, but like his daughter, he was a fan from an early age. "When I was a kid, Star Wars was it. Like, it's in your DNA. I'm old enough to have seen the original one. My cousin Chris and I bent this flagpole back and forth—not like a steel flagpole, a little crappy flagpole—until the metal snapped, having two very sharp points because we're intelligent 5-year-old boys. He was Vader and I was Luke, because I was always the good guy," the actor recalled.

"I ran up this play structure and I ran to make a quick escape around the side and the flagpole hit the ground before I did," Freddie said before allowing host Queen Latifah to examine his facial scar. "My mother witnessed this chunk of chin fly out of my face and screamed. My cousin thought he won because I was bleeding. First blood, right? She drove me to the emergency room and they sewed it back in. I got like little soul patch stitches when I was 5. I looked like I had a goatee. It was cool. It was good."

"I have a Star Wars scar," he added. "I deserve to get to do this guy!"

Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion premieres tonight at 9 p.m. on Disney Channel.