Amy Schumer Goes Metal, Joins the 'Star Wars' Bikini Brigade

Amy Schumer on the cover of ‘GQ’ (Mark Seliger/GQ)

It only appeared on screen for a grand total of 150 seconds, but even today, the metal-bikini outfit that Princess Leia wore at the beginning of the 1983 Star Wars sequel Return of the Jedi remains a fixture in the pop-culture pantheon.

Among previous actresses who’ve paid homage to the steely swimsuit: Jennifer Aniston, who wore it during a famous scene in Friends (it was Ross’s fantasy, of course); Olivia Munn, who wore during a live Attack of the Show segment; Yvonne Strahovski, who wore it on the comedy Chuck; and Kim Kardashian who donned it when she was less famous.

Now joining the bikini brigade is Trainwreck writer and star Amy Schumer, who dons the outfit on the cover of the new issue of GQ magazine. The 34-year-old Schumer isn’t just paying homage to Leia in the photo — she’s also seen sucking on one of C-3PO’s metallic fingers. The picture is just one of several highly sexualized Star Wars-themed shots featured in the magazine, another of which can be seen below.

Amy Schumer with close friends R2-D2 and C-3PO (Mark Seliger/GQ)

Schumer’s bikini-clad, droid-loving cover appearance comes just over a month after she made light of such magazine gimmicks. Speaking at an awards ceremony put on by Glamour in June, Schumer thanked the magazine for not hyper-sexualizing her photos in their recent issue.

“Any comic in the room knows that when a female comic does a photo shoot, they’re like ‘Oh, cool, can you hold this plastic dick over your head?’” she said, to roaring applause and online acclaim.

Schumer, though, told Entertainment Tonight at the premiere of Trainwreck that her family is filled with Star Wars nerds, which would presumably make the costume a thrill to wear. Trainwreck is much about a character owning her own sexuality, and Schumer has been very outspoken about body images issues, and so one could see the writer/actress wearing the costume, at least in part, as a reclamation of an outfit that has been a central part of a stereotypical male fantasy.

The outfit was originally designed in part as a cheeky response to Fisher’s complaints about Leia’s lack of flashy or interesting costumes in the first two Star Wars films. Star Carrie Fisher got more than she bargained for with the slave bikini, which she wears during her time as a prisoner of Jabba the Hutt on Tatooine. Fisher was not a fan of the costume, that’s for sure.

“It was like steel, not steel, but hard plastic, and if you stood behind me you could see straight to Florida,” she told Star Wars Insider magazine in 2003. “You’ll have to ask Boba Fett about that.” In 1999, she told Newsweek that the bikini was “what supermodels will eventually wear in the seventh ring of hell.”

Schumer’s cover is actually quite timely, as some parents have recently thrown fits about an action figure depicting Leia in the skimpy outfit. Fisher responded to the anger on Twitter Tuesday night by reminding people that she’s had to deal with the thing for decades.

No word yet on whether Schumer’s cover will cause any outrage, but it’s unlikely that the bold and confident comedian will care.

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