‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Star Indira Varma Gives More Details on Her Character
Part III of Obi-Wan Kenobi introduced us to Indira Varma’s Captain Tala, a character that, despite only appearing in a couple of seconds in the trailer, has an important role in the story. Now, in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Varma expanded upon her character and what it was like to be on set with Ewan McGregor.
WARNING: This story contains spoilers for the first three episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
We quickly learned that Tala is actually a Rebel officer in disguise, who has been helping Jedi survive Order 66 by operating a safe house that is also part of a larger network. Varma explained the character a bit more in the interview, saying:
“As we can see, she is an Imperial officer and that’s true, but she’s not just that. She joined the Empire and became disillusioned witnessing some of the stuff that they get up to, and she sort of works for the Resistance. She’s a code switcher. But, she maintains her Imperial status because it means that she can go from different worlds and be more useful to our friends. She’s a really great woman, and she has, in her view, nothing to lose because she feels she’s atoning for the bad things that have been done in the past.”
Since Tala is an ally to Obi-Wan, Indira Varma got to spend a lot of time on set with Ewan McGregor. If you combine that with her role in Game of Thrones, where she shared a lot of screen time with Pedro Pascal, she has now been in two major productions with the leads of a Star Wars series. She compared both experiences as follows:
“What’s different about Star Wars, obviously, is the fact that it’s been around for 45 years. That’s my life! (Laughs.) It’s a lot of people’s lifetimes, whereas Game of Thrones is different. It’s shorter. So entering into Star Wars, as it’s known globally, is very exciting and quite daunting. I’ve talked a little bit about this before: As a young girl growing up in England, I didn’t particularly feel served by Star Wars because it was predominantly male. Princess Leia, that was my hero because I had long hair I could do in those lovely wraps, but it didn’t feel like it was for me. And just watching over the decades how it’s evolved and become more modern and reflects the society — it’s become very exciting to be part of it and not just in terms of gender but also in terms of ethnicity and diversity. I feel so privileged because of the way they tell stories.”
We don’t know how big of a role Tala will have going forward. She was last seen helping Obi-Wan after he got burned alive, but we could either open the next episode with Obi-Wan ready for another fight and leaving the safe house, or we could spend half of Part IV with a healing Obi-Wan and Tala by his side. We will have to wait a few more days to see it for ourselves.
Meanwhile, you can check out our written review of Part III of Obi-Wan Kenobi here, and listen to our friends from the Resistance Broadcast do a live discussion here.
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.
