Bryce Dallas Howard on How Personal ‘Star Wars’ Is to Her
Bryce Dallas Howard recently appeared on The Tonight Show to chat with Jimmy Fallon about her new movie Jurassic World: Dominion, though the host also used the occasion to bring up the topic of her Star Wars directing efforts. Howard explained how meaningful Star Wars is to her, and gushed about the fact that she gets to direct Grogu on set. What follows are some of the highlights of the interview, but you can check out the entire interview for yourself at the bottom of the article.
Howard first explained how personal the entire Star Wars galaxy is to her and her entire family, saying:
“I mean, it’s incredible, but for me personally, it was all the more meaningful, because I was very lucky that I got to grow up, basically, on my dad’s movie sets. And since my dad was 17, George Lucas has been my dad’s mentor, because my dad did American Grafitti. And George’s kids have the same age as all the kids in my family, so we were all kind of raised together. And then I actually went to summer camp with Natalie Portman before she did the prequels, and because I knew George I got to visit a bunch on the prequels. So it’s this very personal thing I feel very protective of.”
She was then asked how she got the opportunity to direct on The Mandalorian, to which she replied:
“I’d just finished filming Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and my dad started to direct on Solo. And I was like ‘Can I stay in the U.K. and shadow you, please?’ And he said no. And I kind of begged, and pleaded, and said ‘I’ll just be very quiet on set and no one will realize I’m there.’ So I got to go and shadow him and learn from him. And it was incredible because I hadn’t seen him direct on set since I was a kid, and now, being an actor and having had a couple of decades doing this, I’m like ‘Oh wow, you’re really good!’ So I met a couple of folks there and they actually got me aboard to write something, and that’s how I got to know the folks at Lucasfilm.
One of the reasons why Jon Favreau was so supportive of me working with the Legacy team that developed Baby Yoda was because I’d actually met them and worked with them on both Terminator [Salvation] and the original Jurassic World. And so I knew that team of puppeteers.”
About directing Grogu, she said:
“Yeah, Baby Yoda is the best. And [because everyone falls in love with him] he has a lot of protection on set. We all are just looking at Baby Yoda all the time like ‘I just want to take that Baby Yoda and squeeze him!’ It’s so visceral…”
Bryce Dallas Howard also has a mural of the twin suns of Tatooine painted on the side of her house, and Fallon showed a picture of it. You can check it out, as well as the rest of their conversation, in the video of the interview:
The Mandalorian season 3 will feature another episode directed by Bryce Dallas Howard, as we learned earlier this year. The new season will premiere in February 2023 on Disney Plus.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
