'Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian' reveals a hilariously awkward Dave Filoni story

Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian is an eight-part docuseries about the making of Star Wars: The Mandalorian. Its first episode, which premiered on Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you), focused on the directors who contributed their talent to the hit show's Season 1 episodes.

One of those directors is Dave Filoni, a Lucasfilm legend who has worked in some capacity on every single Star Wars project since 2008's The Clone Wars movie and series. In Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, he revealed that he almost blew his chance to work on any Star Wars project...because he assumed his first call from Lucasfilm was a prank.

Before Filoni got called in for an interview to work on The Clone Wars, he was an animator on Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender. His colleagues at Nick knew he was a huge Star Wars fan, so when he got a call from Lucasfilm Animation (which had not yet been announced as an expansion of Lucasfilm's live action projects), he assumed it was "the guys from SpongeBob" pulling his leg:

"Somebody called from Lucasfilm Animation and I'm like, 'There is no Lucasfilm Animation.' And I thought I had been so excited about Revenge of the Sith coming out and talking about it all the time that the guys from SpongeBob were busting my chops over Star Wars. So I thought it was a prank call... You get so tired of being picked on you're just like, 'This is the SpongeBob guys, I know it is.' And I'm like, 'Oh so you're making Clone Wars, but you kind of already did that, right?"

Filoni laughed when he recounted how skeptical he was in the call and only realized the producer on the line was telling the truth after he had made what he assumed was a prank appointment for an "interview" with "George Lucas."

Thankfully, he kept the appointment and impressed Lucas so much that he became a series creator, executive producer, voice actor, and director for over a decade of iconic Star Wars stories. Take that, guys from SpongeBob.

Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian is now streaming on Disney+.