Billy Dee Williams defends Lando selling out Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back

Whether romancing Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues, playing legendary football running back Gale Says in Brian’s Song, or making the smoothest malt liquor ads to ever grace a television screen, Billy Dee Williams is a national treasure. And the 86-year-old recounts stories about all those projects from his remarkable career in his new memoir What Have We Here? (available Feb. 13).

But there was a time when some people weren’t so happy with Williams due to his work. Even though Lando Calrissian eventually helped rescue Princess Leia and Chewbacca after Darth Vader kept altering the terms of the deal in The Empire Strikes Back, some fans still didn’t forgive the character for making the deal in the first place and allowing Han Solo to be captured and frozen in carbonite. And they had no problem letting the actor playing him know about it.

Williams spoke all about the backlash as a guest on EW’s Dagobah Dispatch podcast, and it turns out that backlash extended to both elementary schools and the not-so-friendly skies. “When I would pick my daughter up from school, the kids would run up to me and say, ‘You betrayed Han Solo!’” says Williams. “I'd go on an airplane and the airplane stewards would say, ‘You betrayed Han Solo!'”

Finally, the actor had enough. “I got that for a lot of years. So finally, I said, ‘Look, think about the whole situation. You're up against a pretty formidable character in Darth Vader. And then there's, of course, Boba Fett. And these people were invading my space and I had to bargain with them. But the bargain at least prevented the complete demise of Han Solo and his friends. But I had to hold on to my whole situation.”

And that situation was Cloud City, of which Calrissian was Baron Administrator — responsible for keeping the tibana gas mining colony out of Imperial crosshairs. That put Lando in the position of having to choose between his friend and those he was assigned to protect.

“So I found myself explaining all this stuff to a point where I finally said to people, ‘Look, I'm tired of explaining all of this.’ I said, ‘Did anybody die? Nobody died!’ I think that was a clear indication that Lando was trying to figure something out and he was trying to figure out primarily how to hold onto his situation without the complete demise of his friend.”

While fans may have been initially upset at Lando for putting Han Solo in peril, no one could argue that his introduction on the Cloud City landing platform — which was the very first thing the actor shot as Lando — was anything but epic. “For me it was kind of a pivotal, classic, dubious hero moment, and I just wanted to make the best of it,” says Williams. “I wanted to do something really interesting with it. I was always thinking: Let me do this and not make people conscious of the fact that I am a particular ethnicity. I didn't want that to be the focus or the focal point in introducing that character. It was me, Billy Dee, doing what Billy Dee does.”

Listen to the full conversation with Billy Dee Williams on EW's Dagobah Dispatch podcast.

Related content:

• Ahsoka star Eman Esfandi wiped out during his first big lightsaber fight
• Hayden Christensen was like a 'giddy little boy' reading Ahsoka script
• Ahsoka awakens: Rosario Dawson's journey from 'hyped fangirl' to lightsaber-wielding warrior
• Rosario Dawson explains how Ahsoka was inspired by Gandalf
• Ahsoka star Diana Lee Inosanto literally trained her whole life to enter the Star Wars galaxy