Watch: Rick Moranis unretires to play 'Spaceballs' character in 'The Goldbergs' (exclusive)
It has taken only 31 years, but Rick Moranis is finally back in black. The star of Ghostbusters and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is reprising his Spaceballs character, Dark Helmet, in this week’s Mel Brooks-inspired episode of ABC’s hit comedy The Goldbergs. When the show’s geeky hero, Adam (Sean Giambrone), lays eyes on the director’s 1987 Star Wars spoof, he instantly becomes a devotee of the hilarious mind behind The Producers and Young Frankenstein. The comic power of the Schwartz is so strong that Spaceballs even starts invading the high schooler’s dreams. In this exclusive clip from the episode — which airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. — Adam has a hallucinatory late-night encounter with the movie’s Darth Vader-inspired villain, complete with a lightsaber duel. Um … make that “Schwartz rings.” (Watch the clip above.)
Sadly, that isn’t Moranis’s head under Dark Helmet’s dark helmet. The Canadian actor stepped away from the industry in 1997 in the wake of his wife’s death, and while he’s not officially retired, he hasn’t appeared onscreen in two decades and his last voice-over credit came in 2007. But that is him taunting Adam over the size of his Schwartz ring and teasing details for Spaceballs II: The Search for More Money, the never-made sequel that Yoda stand-in Yogurt pitched three decades ago. Frankly, it’s a miracle that The Goldbergs managed to score Moranis for even a vocal cameo. He has turned down revisiting his classic ’80s roles in the past, most notably rejecting the chance to appear in Paul Feig’s 2015 Ghostbusters reboot. Apparently, the Schwartz is mightier than a proton pack.
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