‘Ahsoka’ Cast and Crew on the Transition Into Live-Action and the State of Their Characters
One of the biggest takeaways from the Star Wars Celebration announcements has been everything surrounding the Ahsoka series, which dropped its first trailer online on Friday. A re-cut and extended version of that promo was displayed on-screen on Saturday morning for some audiences at Celebration, which included our first shot ever of Grand Admiral Thrawn in live-action.
But there is so much more to dissect than that. The story told in the series will be the years-in-the-making payoff to the Star Wars: Rebels finale, also culminating (at least temporarily) several plot threads that have been evolving throughout the three seasons of The Mandalorian and the second half of The Book of Boba Fett. Dave Filoni, who wrote all the episodes himself, recently spoke to Screen Rant about his transition from the animation world into the live-action realm. He’s been an active writer and director on all the aforementioned series, but with Ahsoka he’s taken it to a whole new level. He said:
“Each episode felt like a paper that was reviewing how much we were all learning in the animation division.
I carried that over when I finally went to live-action, but I had to learn the different subtleties and nuances of writing a script for that versus what I do in animation. It’s just different.
There’s a lot of similarities in virtual production, but a big question was that when I do an animation of Ahsoka, I can control so much of the attitude, the posture, the acting, and the personality. Ashley Eckstein, with her wonderful voice and our collaboration of years, is something so special. But I had to then take this and really go outside my comfort zone, and put the character in live-action.”
The series will feature a more seasoned Ahsoka Tano, who has learned a lot throughout the years. She is played once again by Rosario Dawson, who told Screen Rant the following about where we find her at the beginning of her story:
“You’re still gonna see her stubborn, which I don’t think she’s totally graduated out of. When you first saw her, she was super hot-headed and maybe a little bit more impulsive, so there is absolutely a lot of experience and a lot of wisdom there. She’s made some really hard choices in her life, and I think they’ve had a really intense effect on her. I think that’s really exciting, because a little bit in The Mandalorian and Boba Fett, she has a grace and a calm. She’s very together; she’s so capable, but that can be boring, if that was really only where she was at.
It’s really nice to explore a little bit of how lonely that is, to be a hero out there in the world. You sacrifice a lot to do that, and for the fans who’ve been with her throughout this journey, they know how much she’s gone through. It’s really nice to be able to better deep dive on this than we’ve gotten a chance to in the previous shows.”
As previously mentioned, the series will be a direct continuation of Rebels, and therefore will bring in several characters from that show into live-action. One of them, confirmed during this year’s event, is Hera Syndulla, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. She got married last year to another Star Wars icon, Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, Ewan McGregor. Speaking to her, Screen Rant asked her about McGregor’s advice to her when she joined the project, and if she could ever see a team-up between the couple on-screen, to which she replied:
“I don’t know that he gave me any advice necessarily, other than to just enjoy it. He just told me about what a special experience it is to get to be part of something that means so much to so many people. And that already is proving true just today. And, yeah! I think if there was any way to make the timelines match up in some way, I would be incredibly happy to do that.”
On the villain side, we met in the trailer Ray Stevenson’s Baylan, whose role in the series remains otherwise a secret kept under lock and key. Filoni even joked that everything surrounding his character is a spoiler. Speaking to Screen Rant, though, the actor did confirm a few minor details about Baylan, and what it was like for him to play the character:
“Maybe he’s unique; some catalyst that upsets the apple cart; that sparks off and fires, and yet is meandering through a journey that is colliding and causing reactions. These layers for an actor to be given… Do we really need to know yet? It’s more about the journey, isn’t it?
And they are sometimes like catalysts; they’re thrown into this thing as a catalyst, and the reaction that comes out is an effervescent spectacle. Or then there’s another meandering of, ‘What’s going on? What is their mission? Are they working for them? Not really.’ What’s driving them is the exciting thing about playing this character. It’s not one or the other.
When you see Baylan actually get to meet Thrawn, [you wonder] if it’s the first time or last time. ‘What’s going on again? Hang on, what’s the dynamic here?’ That’s another thing that the fans will discover.”
The big bad of the series, however, will be Grand Admiral Thrawn, who was confirmed on Saturday to be played once again by Lars Mikkelsen. It’s been speculated for a long time that Thrawn could first appear in the last two episodes of The Mandalorian, given the season 2 tease. When asked by Screen Rant, however, Mikkelsen played extremely coy, saying:
“I cannot answer that.”
More will be revealed in the last two episodes of The Mandalorian, and in the coming months as we lead into the release of Ahsoka, coming out on Disney Plus this August.
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.
