REPORT: Gwendoline Christie Talks To EW About Captain Phasma
If you’re not a Gwendoline Christie fan, you most likely will be after December. The actor spoke briefly with Entertainment Weekly about her role as Captain Phasma in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and what it meant to her.
Gwendoline Christie is already known to many in the science-fiction/fantasy community for her role as Brienne of Tarth on HBO’s Game of Thrones. It was exciting to hear she would be taking up the chrome armor of Captain Phasma in the Star Wars universe, and it goes without saying, SW fans have not yet been treated to a female villain on the big screen yet.
Christie tells EW that Captain Phasma’s gender is very “matter of fact” and that she had a very good time brining the character’s more sinister intentions to life.
From the article: “We know very little about her at this stage, but what I think people are drawn to is that this is a very progressive female character,” the actress says. “We see Captain Phasma, and we see the costume from head to toe, and we know that it is a woman. But we are used to, in our media, connecting to female characters via the way that they look, from the way they are made flesh.”
The article also mentions Christie will be portraying Commander Lyme, a prominent character in The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay–Part Two. Looks like it’s a big year for Ms. Christie!
If any of you have enjoyed her work on Game of Thrones thus far, I think it’s safe to say Gwendoline Christie will deliver as Captain Phasma. No one knows if the character will have a role in Episode VIII or IX. She is an extremely talented actor, so it’s exciting that she will add her presence to the Star Wars story. Christie admits to being something of a fangirl herself, which is always great to hear.
Head on over to Entertainment Weekly to check out the rest of her interview in their Holiday Issue preview.
Kyle Larson lives in Portland, Oregon. When he's not running trails, he's reading and writing.
Love her. She is bad-ass.
Captain phasma is gonna be a really cool character.
Gwendoline is the type of “Tough Female” that I want in my movies!! For the folks out there who complain about there aren’t enough Strong female characters, well – this is the one.
Also, it’s obvious that yes, she’s clearly a female, but that doesn’t distract in the sense of “She’s a Kickass Female Character.” No, here persona on the screen is accepted no matter her gender. I simply enjoy her as an actor.
I find it interesting that she said ” she dose inhuman things” in the movie.
“We see the costume, from head to toe and know that it is a woman”. Maybe if we see her in the body glove or without the helmet but I don’t see it at all and I doubt anyone else would who didn’t know who was playing her. She doesn’t look much different from the male troopers aside from her height, chrome armor, and sash. Even her movements are the same as theirs.
She is saying “we know that it’s a woman” DESPITE the costume.
Old Fart is saying though that you wouldn’t know unless told or by hearing her voice.
You could say the same exact thing and just replace the gender pronoun: “In the suit it’s impossible to know it’s a man.” We know she’s a woman because they obviously will make it clear she’s a woman.
Or they could do the Samus Aran (who she should also play) thing and not reveal it till future episodes even though all the adults know who she is.
They had some sound clips of her toy on here a few weeks back but I never got to listen due to the link not working and I haven’t seen it yet in stores so I don’t know for sure.
If so that’s a very odd comment she made unless it was mistranslated….
“We see Captain Phasma, and we see the costume from head to toe, and we know that it is a woman.”
Although I haven’t seen her in motion yet it is usually obvious when someone is female, even if they are covered from head-to-toe. Women move differently and interact differently; unless the actor has made a specific attempt to disguise that.
From previous interviews I got the impression that she and JJ wanted to highlight that she is female: reinforced here by “we know it is a woman” from above. That would suggest that she dos not take her helmet off.
I’m hoping she disguises it. From what we know of the Empire, They are not big on individuality and I can’t see the First Order making an exception for women. I’ve known a lot of female officers and military types over the years who don’t “move female” while in uniform.
I hope she doesn’t take it off because that whole mystery aura is what made Boba Fett intially so interesting. We know what Christie’s face and body looks like but not Phasma’s.
Yeah okay. Just making the point that to me its usually obvious in film.
In most films but Star Wars is a little different, The fact we never had a female trooper onscreen for one. I just don’t want to see her sashay like Catwoman and turn this whole thing into Flash Gordon-esque camp which is why I prefer a military gait.
Here we go again. Making it all about the female genitalia. Can’t we just for once read an article that doesn’t make a big deal out of the female gender? A villain is a villain. I want to know more about her character. I already know she has boobs and a vajayjay.
I assume you’re a white heterosexual male by the level of ignorance in your comment.
YOU may not care that it’s a woman character and they’re flaunting that fact, but there are all sorts of female Star Wars fans and little girls who are nerded out they’ll have a strong female actress playing a villain in the new film.
Grow up. Evolve.
And I assume you are a misandrist racist bisexual.
So I suppose it’s alright for men and media to “nerd out” every time we see an empowered progressive male villain also.
The troll has been deleted and banned. Sexism and/or prejudice will not be tolerated. Sorry you had to deal with that.
I know that in the UK the concept of “freedom of speech” is foreign due to being ruled by a monarchy for so long – and you Brits are used to censorship (as a by-product of your government) – but here in America, we take pride in our rights when it comes to unfiltered speech.
Do you catch my drift? 😉
Freedom of speech means a right to non-interference by the state, not by private entities. If I stand up and start shouting during a movie in a movie theater, the theater manager isn’t violating my right to free speech by silencing me or throwing me out. Likewise, the moderators of this site aren’t violating anyone’s right to free speech in taking their comments off the site.
Here is a different scenario to a theater: nobody is there to have a conversation. So your position is only ‘approved’ speech is allowed. This is a good way to suppress diversity of opinion.
I didn’t get to see the post by the banned poster, but I do remember (I think) a mod from this site slandering some people by calling them racist, sexist, misogynist despite there statements clearly implying the opposite. That would be the ‘girl power’ story. But I know how this works: insults and slander are okay from the approved side, not the other, as in wider society.
Just making a point.
We’re not dealing with the NSA here, I trust the people running this site to delete disgustingly sexist/misogynistic comments etc. They can carry on and delete the ignorant idiots who try to post here. Quite why they’re even Star Wars fans in the first place or exactly what Star Wars means to them is beyond me. Luke Skywalker and co were never closed minded right wing douchebags in my imagination.
The problem I have with the current climate is that the sexist, misogynist speech that is banned is ‘from a certain point of view’ only. The easy way to see that is is to replace the word ‘woman’ with ‘man’ in any offensive comment you see. If it then has ‘man’ or ‘misogynist’ in that sentence it will usually be allowed. Misandry is a word and concept that most people haven’t heard of, but switch the roles and the prejudice becomes obvious.
This is a good point: free speech isn’t just a legal right as I narrowly defined it; more than this, having inclusive public debate and discourse also promotes just the kind of civil society that leads to the kind of democracy that would protect the narrowly defined legal right.
That said, there’s always a question as to just how inclusive our public debates need to be in order to promote the right kind of civil society. To take an extreme example, if someone posted a hundred comments here actively advocating child rape in vulgar terms, you might think that including their speech actually harms the atmosphere of the conversation more than it helps it. For example, the vast majority of people would be so offended that the conversation would effectively stop altogether: they would all flee it in disgust.
No one is likely to disagree with the move, then, to ban the vocal pedophile. We’re in a cultural atmosphere right now, though, where certain kinds of speech about race and gender are very contentious: specifically, the whole conversation about ‘political correctness’. Some people will think that anyone who criticizes it (or even uses the term) must be a bigot. Others think such critiques are important, and actually help us to become better and fairer in dealing with these issues. This isn’t a black-and-white area right now, and this vagueness makes it difficult to judge whether being inclusive or excluding certain speech is the better option.
Like you said, it’s hard to judge if you can’t see what the person said…
If it makes you feel better, simply pointing out that 1/3 of the attendees at a Star Wars convention I attended also got my post removed. I honestly don’t know what’s going on here.
The sexism and prejudice in American_Ignorant’s first sentence is okay though.
It wasn’t my intention to get anything deleted or banned. It was to highlight bias and double standards that lead to the stifling of debate and the suppression of dissent.
Tarth Vader
god that’s good 🙂
Thank you..I’m here all week
Darth of Tarth
Upvoted for great justice!
Lol
Captain Phasma and Darth Vader do have similar qualities… name wise and costume wise… Vader was much more of a royal storm trooper then just some dude cloaked in black like Kylo Ren appears to be. I wonder if Captain Phasma is the actual new Darth Vader… maybe with whole a trilogy story arc… it does seem she will be traveling with the usual storm trooper entourage as well. It will be very interesting to see how all the characters fall into place and relate to each other… on both sides. I didn’t like how the PT basically had disposable villains that you basically knew were going to die that movie. Or they seam to have split Darth Vader into two characters… the leader of the storm troopers and the dark side jedi… anyway… pure fun speculation.
I might get banned but what the hell, I really think there seems to be a strong conscious effort to be PC in the new Star Wars movies. Kennedy has openly stated she is making sure women have larger roles, and even went on to say 80% of people involved in TFA are women. Good for all of us if the product is worth it, but why does this have to be an issue. Leia is a strong character, and so was Padme, they were naturally that way, this “progressive female” thing sounds too much like propaganda. I just hope SW isn’t turned into a political agenda thing.
I am female and really like the inclusion of more female characters. While Leia was a great female character, as a kid I wished there were more female characters and used to make my Jawa female when I played star war figures with my brother.
There were more femsle characters in the PT but aside from Padme, they were very minor characters.
And yet somehow those old movies still managed to be perfect. Because it wasn’t about demographics. It was about telling a good story. Would ESB hve been any better if yoda, boba and lando had been female? Would the OT have been any better or worse if Han was asian, chewie was black and lea was a latina?
Chances are it would have been worse. When the marketing department takes over the storytelling, things begin to suck.
Why would it have been any worse if Han weren’t white or Yoda was a female. By all means, explain.
Because it was PERFECT. You (and all the other PC freaks) forget that movies are primarily art. Not a statement about women’s rights, not a representation of demographics, they are art. Han was written as a white guy and Yoda was written as a 2 foot tall green creature because the artist felt inspired to write them that way. It wasn’t some marketing guy going over the numbers and saying “gee, we need to have at least 20% black characters in our movie to secure that demographic.”
If you don’t know the difference between art and business, that’s your problem.
“Han was written as a white guy.” A, no, he was written as a guy. They auditioned all different ethnic types (if you want to pick nits he was originally written as an alien). B, what does that even mean? What about Han Solo is intrinsically “white”?
Also, the name calling always makes people take an argument less seriously, but since it’s hard to take you seriously in the first place I’ll let it go.
There is room for everyone in TGFFA, and kids all need heroes they can relate to. Aiming for diversity is not a politcal agenda thing … it is a reflection of the real world that we actually live in.
Less a political one and more of a marketing decision. Disney’s fanbase is largely female and Fury Road, Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight, 50 Shades, etc. shows that there is a strong audience for female led blockbuster films. The industry is cyclical and you saw this with blaxploitation films in the 70’s and teen ones in the 90’s/00’s. At the end of the day it’s not about being “progressive” as it is about being profitable.
On one hand, anything that’s done by numbers and quotas tends to be of lesser quality. But that’s the tendency – not the rule.
So far, the female characters in SW are matching up to be pretty interesting.
All the supposedly “progressive” stuff lately has actually been rather poorly done, Hunger Games, for instance, has a pretty weak female protagonist.
Hell, even in Frozen, Elsa goes all ballistic because emotions, which is sad, because I really wanted Elsa to have a rounded out character story, and I was really disappointed at how the writers executed it.
The only “progressive” series that I AM NOT worried about is Star Wars.
It seems like they’re really taking a “from the ground up” approach, working on the character first with cultural expectation on the back-burner,
which to me is very promising. I got high hopes that Chrometrooper will be awesome.
Rey looks like a good character too, giving her the whole “Binary Sunset – destined for greatness” motif was a smart move.
Overall I’m happy with what I see so far.
Generally agree, but hope the possible bad signs don’t deliver the usual bad results.
You seem to completely ignore the fact you instinctively accept a predominantly male cast and agenda with the story as being the norm… have a quick rethink about that. Males are not, and should not, be any more or less significant than female characters. If you have a hard time with that then please keep thinking on. Clearly your viewpoint comes from one where only males are seen as acceptable lead characters. Oh and possibly white people too. A black or female lead suddenly makes you think that somewhere along the line YOU’RE being sidelined. HAVE A THINK MATE.
It’s an action movie. Males are definitely supposed to be more significant, because have a look at human history. Men have been doing 99.99999% of the fighting. Now there have indeed been female warriors from Viking shieldmaidens to a famous female brigand with the strength of two men in medieval italy to modern day female soldiers. But let’s face it… fighting females rarely work in movies. Unless it’s Gina Carano or Ronda Rousey, fight scenes with women have almost never been any good. Spontaniously I remember various fights from Kill Bill, one with Gina Gershon from Showgirls or Bound and Arnold vs Sharon Stone from Total Recall. And that’s about it. The rest is wireworks and cartoon physics and they take you right out of a movie.
Lea did some shooting on the OT and it was totally believable because it came natural. Maybe it will come natural with captain phasma as well. I hope it does. But that’s what it’s supposed to be. “Natural”. Not “progressive” propaganda.
Men did most of the fighting in OUR world. Just because that’s the case in our reality doesn’t mean it needs to be reflected in a fictional world, in a galaxy far, far away.
Fair point, but since we live in the real world it does need to stay convincing. Dr Who for me is a case in point. Due to this Feminist style agenda of pushing women into roles I find it frequently unbearable. Not because there are women everywhere but because they are unconvincing. Frequently they can’t hold a gun properly, don’t play the part convincingly, have the wrong physique. The main reason for that would be the dictate to have more women which results in a poorer show due to lowering of standards, because as in the real world not many women can actually full-fill those roles either. That is not even the most offensive part about it, that is the reinforcing of new sexist stereotypes. Take note when watching Dr Who that whenever the Dr encounters a group of people, the cowardly person will be male, the incompetent person will be male, the selfish person will be male etcetera. The derogatory portrayal of a character is almost always to be a male. It is deemed sexist and demeaning to do that to women in today’s double standards. That sort of thing has the potential to ruin Star Wars for many people, so I highlight it in the hope it doesn’t go that far.
A funny thing about this sort of thing is that because the majority of the work being done by males isn’t seen as a good enough justification to portray it that way, yet the equal representation of females is necessary even though they don’t do equal work. All that would be okay if the protests against male dominance didn’t exist.
Since the Star Wars women don’t look like MMA fighters, I’m assuming the same rules apply.
The 99.9% human history comment is just horrible logic. Connecting much of human history in which we were either living in caves or the forest with what should be in a modern technological fantasy makes 0 sense. This star wars conspiracy theory nonsense needs to go away.
One of the reasons Star Wars is successful is because it stuck to age-old world-wide mythical themes. Kennedy has achieved and implied that the idea is to change things; so its not a conspiracy theory. It has happened just as it is applied in wider society.
I wouldn’t have much of a problem with the inclusion of more female characters if it didn’t coincide with that dogma. From what I’ve seen in other areas it is likely to be a bad sign.
Praytell, what is the way to include more female characters that wouldn’t automatically make you think there was an “agenda”?
It’s not a conspiracy, the acress herself said it “progressive blabla”. It’s political. Now I don’t mind it in the case of her character, because that woman actually looks like someone who could hold her own against a man. At least it’s not some 90 pound waif beating up giant men again.
What does bother me is that the story of this movie seems to have been written by a marketing department with a political agenda in mind. And I won’t pay for propaganda.
So don’t pay for it. Cheers.
That’s what torrents are for after all, isn’t it?
The quality of action with women to date doesn’t mean that women going forward can’t be action stars with good quality talent in from of and behind the camera.
The real reason that action movies are, or at least have been, male dominated is for the simple fact that most of the audience that goes to see them is male.
As a male, I actually prefer watching a woman doing acrobatic and physical stuff over watching a male…
I’m not mysogynistic, quite the contrary. I would love to have more female action stars. But it has to be believable. I had martial arts training in my youth. No matter how skilled, a Scarlett Johansson could not beat an average male. Ronda Rousey would wipe the floor with an average male (pity she can’t act).
Male action stars don’t look like Pee Wee Herman, so why does Hollywood try to make female action stars out of skinny girls that look like lingerie models instead of fighters. If you ask me, THAT is sexist, because it’s a completely unrealistic expectation and tells girls they just need to look like male sex fantasies. There’s nothing “progressive” about it.
Why can’t someone like Scarlett Johansson take down a man? A smaller women with in depth partial arts training could easily take down an untrained man. I think your “man are bigger” viewpoint is somewhat shortsighted.
Trust me, I’ve had half a decade of tournament experience. Even if she were a black belt, there’s no way a woman her size could beat an average adult male unles she got a lucky first hit to the throat or something. Men are three times as strong, have thicker muscle which makes body blows ineffective and thicker, heavier bones as well, which makes even strikes to the head less effective. When a man rushes down a woman, it’s not a pretty sight.
Thanks for the analysis Dr Freud.
He’s not saying that at all. I think you need to read what he said more carefully as you’re jumping on the knee-jerk bandwagon.
Oh no! Not ANOTHER female villain in a Star Wars film. I mean, didn’t we JUST get that shape-shifting bounty hunter from AotC? You know, the one that was too stupid to shift shapes to evade capture? And then there was…um…uh…
Whatever! Two female villains in seven films is clearly “progressive propaganda”, right? I mean, that 6′-3″ Gwendoline Christie doesn’t look at all intimidating in that armor.
And how dare Kathleen Kennedy talk about the women that were involved in the making of this movie at an event called “Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit”. Preposterous!
Work harder at your sarcasm, you have.
I don’t think that’s what he’s saying at all. He’s saying he doesn’t care how many strong female characters there are, he just doesn’t feel comfortable with them being there are part of an agenda.
Sounds like a reasonable perspective, but only if you ignore what goes on around you. It happens in most areas of society. Having more females seems fair and reasonable at the start. Then they demand more and more until they are in the majority, then comes the refusal to apply the same standards that got them there in reverse. One real world exaple would be Universities: in the US its about 70% female now. Things were changed to favour the inclusion of females, now the shoe is on the other foot they oppose doing anything about it. That is the way it mostly goes.
I think that is the largest area of protest comes from. If you are male having male things and space isn’t allowed; women must also be included. As usual it doesn’t apply in reverse. All female Ghostbusters, Ocean’s 11 etcetera. If its fine for women to do that its nothing but hypocrisy unless men can also. Just because men had something doesn’t mean women also have a right to it just because they are women. I’m not making a case for excluding women altogether, just their ability to claim that not being included is somehow a crime.
The majority of fans are male, most of the profit comes from that group too. Not to mention most of the making of it all. That doesn’t mean women should be excluded. More women is a good idea if its done fairly; the usual results indicate otherwise.
It’s not political agenda, it’s Disney trying to leverage some delicious synergy from their existing girls and tween girls fanbase. The nerd and young boy demo is a lock, so where else are they going to grow the brand? Won’t care if the product delvers, but getting so tired of both sides of this argument – it’s not an evil plot, and it’s not “progressive” – it’s just business.
Agree that business is a large part of it; that also illustrates that part of that business is replacing males with females. Look at Dr Who now: virtually any male role other than the Dr is shown in a derogatory way. Every other group in society is allowed to protest against that.
How exactly is expanding the field “replacing” males? You would need six Star Wars movies with completely female casts before you even had fifty:fifty parity, and they clearly aren’t doing that.
Also, I guess you missed Missy. Or the numerous female villains that have appeared on Doctor Who since the series was rebooted.
Expanding the field alone isn’t as you hint. I’m talking in general of the trend to artificially import females today. The artificial part of that is the problem. The plans for all female Ghostbusters and Ocean’s 11 and whatever else they’re cooking up would be examples of literally replacing the male cast.
The Dr Who example wasn’t comparing heroes and villains. There hasn’t been a dramatic surge in female villains as with heroines. Was talking about the ‘average’ other cast he encounters: female capabilities are usually show as superior to the males. If women were constantly shown in the same way you’d never hear the end of the screeching. But its okay to do males now.
Did forget Missy, wouldn’t have been able to name her either, being recent. I could remember a couple of female villains though. Overall in that show its, males = negative, females = positive.
Just highlighting a trend I don’t agree with and wouldn’t be supported if the sex was reversed.
You won’t get banned. The only reason I banned the last poster was the crude, sexist manner he stated his position. I might not agree with what you’re saying, but you’re entitled to your opinion.
Thanks all for the replies, I am not chauvinist and enjoy a lot of franchises with strong lead females (Once upon a Time, Labyrinth, Slasher movies, etc). I love Finn and Rey. What I mentioned is the need from the filmmakers and actors to clearly state and claim every chance they get their PC. Just let it be, don’t make an issue out of something that shouldn’t be. Why should we have to hear “oh, we are a progressive company, we have girls in lead roles”. Well, we’ve had them in the past in many movies and nobody said a thing.
I don’t know about propaganda, but there does seem a conscious effort to make things more female and minority centric, which doesn’t entirely sit right with me. It’s the same with the female Ghostbusters and the idea of a female Doctor Who.
I think when the makers of these things sit down and say “we need X women or minorities in this” they do so out of their own desire to feel worthy and progressive. But it’s ultimately counter productive. Ghostbusters is entirely built around the gimmick of four women, and that’s supposedly progressive. Actually it’s the complete opposite, because the message is that you can only have an all female cast in an effort to stick it to the sexes and feel like you’re making a statement. In reality things should be organic. The story should come first and if as a by product of that you end up with four women, then so what? That’s far more equal that building around a gimmick.
40 years ago we had a strong and feisty character in Leia. We have a black man as part of the main cast of the sequels (Billy Dee). Did anyone give a rat’s arse about their colour or gender? No. They were interesting characters and their colour and gender was irrelevant. If anything it feels like we are going backwards when we get to the stage where people are saying “we need X number of this sort of person in the movie” and then it’s impacting the organic part of the creative process because you’re already working to a guideline. I would much prefer it to be the case that filmmakers worked on a script and if, at the casting process, mostly women or minority actors were best for the roles through actual acting ability, then they get the job.
The problem is that one is not allowed to carry out a dialectical assessment of society’s approach to gender and race equality without immediately being branded as a sexist or racist if you look at it a different way.
Your argument holds no water. An all girls Ghostbusters is a gimmick. a contrivance from the start. Force awakens is not. Kasdan and JJ wrote the story first then spent a year casting it. Sure they decided on a female protagonist…but so what? what does that matter? it’s no more contrived than a stereotypical male hero. And they did not write the script with anyone in mind for Finn. If you remember back during the casting process Many non-black actors auditioned for Finn. They were open minded enough to not let colour matter in their choice. And why should it? If you saw Attack the block you would see that Boyega is a talented actor and was deemed to be perfect for the part. so far he looks great to me. when i saw him pop up in that first teaser i did not think “BLACK!”..i thought..woah…dude in a stormtrooper uniform on tatooine freaking out! wtf?? cool!! if all you saw was “BLACK”..well that’s on you dude. maybe you don’t know any black people and they seem foreign to you. but they did not cast him just because he’s black. they cast him because he best fit the role. The fact is he beat out all the white actors. And if it was a toss up between white or black..all things being equal but colour…why not choose an under-represented demographic? if you call that PC..well fine. but so what? you have an issue with that…your problem.
Your post is one huge straw man. I have not suggested that Boyega was cast as part of any sort of agenda. I was reflecting on the general attitude in Hollywood that often impacts casting choices, and not declaring any certainties in respect of this project whatsoever. If Boyega wascast in spite of his colour then that is EXACTLY what I am advocating. That fact that you imply I am a racist is a disgusting tactic, thoroughly below the belt, when you consider that my post clearly suggests the opposite. Utterly disgraceful.
I’m not implying that you are a racist. I’m saying it sounds like you have ingrained white/male biases. I see nothing “counter productive” in “Hollywood” challenging these biases.
You’re an idiot too hung up on PC to see WTF is going on here. Back to your Starbucks, pajama boy.
It is no secret Kathy Kennedy confirmed Phasma and Maz would continue to play a role in following Epidode 8&9 during the interview in Japan.
She looks badass in that armor Boba Fett prepare to be repalaced!