‘Ahsoka’ Main Cast on How Their Characters Inspire Them, Lightsaber Training, and Where They Stand at the Beginning of the Story
The main stars from Disney Plus’ upcoming Ahsoka, Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka Tano), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Hera Syndulla), and Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Sabine Wren), stopped by the most recent episode of Entertainment Weekly‘s Dagobah Dispatch podcast. There, they discussed some of the perks of stepping into the shoes of characters with such a rich backstory and a built-in fandom, lightsaber training, and more.
When asked where Ahsoka Tano is at the beginning of the story, Dawson replied the following:
“You already know these characters from Clone Wars and Rebels, so with Ahsoka, you’ve seen The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, and you know she’s on the hunt for Grand Admiral Thrown. Obviously, Sabine made a promise and there is someone who is top of the mind for us that we are looking for, but the man of the hour is Thrawn. And it’s kind of exciting to finally be here at Star Wars Celebration and see the back of his head on screen!”
We know from the end of Rebels and the glimpses we’ve had in the trailer, that Ahsoka and Sabine will be teaming up for that mission in what looks to be the beginning of the show. From Dawson’s words and her episode of The Mandalorian, we understand that her primary objective is to locate Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen), but as she also teased, there is another side to that coin — Ezra Bridger, played in the series by Eman Esfandi. From what Liu Bordizzo later hinted at, it seems like that will be her main goal when embarking on the mission. When asked where and how we find Sabine at the beginning of the story, the actress replied the following:
“She’s been through a lot. She’s still a stubborn cookie, but I think that you find her… At the end of Rebels she was a huge part of the liberation of Lothal, and many regard her as her hero, but she certainly does not feel that way about it. She’s only thinking about the obligation she has towards her friend, so she’s got that mission in mind, not her status. She’s got a huge journey to go on with Ashoka, so we find her at the start of that.”
When it came to preparing for the show, the three of them had no shortage of material to pull from to inspire their performances. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, for instance, has explained before how getting to know Hera from her childhood through The Bad Batch was a huge help for her to understand the character. But for Liu Bordizzo, it was a matter of understanding the character first, and then, when it was time to shoot the live-action series, almost forgetting about all the knowledge she had and letting the character flow through her
“I watched it all with the intention of capturing the essence of the character and having almost this free storage bank of memories that they’d already worked so hard to create. So it was awesome as an actor to have that. But then live-action is so different, so I absorbed it all and then forgot it all at the same time.”
This was something Winstead definitely related to, as she explained how the character keeps inspiring her on a daily basis:
“I see Hera as an incredibly strong and very complicated person. She is very maternal, but also she’s this leader of this crew, and as we see her as she continues on and she becomes a General, she leads quite a lot of people and she’s become something of a legend in her own right. But she’s also very soft and warm and people come to her for advice, and solace, and comfort.
And I think seeing those things combined is very unusual and something that I really wanted to play on screen, because I think that’s such an aspirational thing as a woman or as a person, to be all of those things at once. She’s certainly not perfect, but she does have all of those qualities that make her someone you can relate to and look up to, and I like to try to be that on film because I don’t know that I can try to live up to that in reality, but it’s something I can reach for.”
As we saw in the Ahsoka trailer, there is plenty of lightsaber action. It was revealed at Star Wars Celebration that even Sabine will be picking up a lightsaber to fight Ivanna Sakhno’s Shin Hati, but it’s clear that the bulk of the action will be on the title character. That meant a lot of training for the actress, as Dawson explained:
“One of my favorite parts of this was the lightsaber training. Doing two hours a day, seven days a week was pretty intense, and then you added when we were actually filming it and doing these different battles and having to continue to be studying it. And there was definitely a time, a moment, where a few months into the training I just felt it like land in my body in a way. Because, you know, she’s ambidextrous. It was just a lot to kind of own.
And what’s amazing about this character, and that’s been since the inception of her, it’s just how confident [she is]. She’s so fierce from the very beginning. There was never a question of what she’s capable of. She meets every single match so head-on. There is no hesitancy from her whatsoever. And that’s very different from someone who is learning martial arts in her 40s who’s trying to protect her face.
To have that moment, I remember when it clicked in, where I really felt grounded in her and the stuff started feeling more familiar and seamless and that’s when I really felt that I locked into Ahsoka. Because I think her physicality is a tremendous part of who she is and that felt really really good.”
As she went on to explain, one of the key figures in bringing Ahsoka’s physicality to life was stunt coordinator Ming Qiu, who was very demanding of her actresses and asked for a lot more than they thought at first they could do. And they love her for that:
“I was grateful for the team of people that we have and to have someone like Ming. And a lot of the fans will recognize Ming, who did a lot of the training and coordination for all of us, she was… In the very first episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi, she plays a Jedi Master who was protecting the younglings. And that’s how we knew it was fake, because in real life had she had a lightsaber, she would have killed them all and all of the younglings would have been safe. Because she’s truly such a badass, and to have that moment where she wasn’t looking at me like this, but she started nodding and… What was the line that she said? ‘This one did not make my eyes hurt.’ That was the first compliment that I got, it made me cry. She started martial arts when she was nine. And what is easy for her it took a lot of effort on our part to make it look easy.
And that felt good, that felt really remarkable. That kind of discerning eye… We were talking to Dave [and he was like] ‘When I’m cutting it I’m thinking [it should look like this]. Is it doing justification to what she did?’ And I think that’s really true for all of the crew. Everyone really owned their space and worked beautifully with each other to just make sure every single detail of this was as rich and real and powerful as it possibly could be.”
The conversation concluded with Dawson explaining how, even though she can’t use the Force in her daily life, she truly believes such an energy field surrounding and binding us all exists, in its own way:
“But I think, you know, it’s a manifestation, really, right? It’s the intention and the desire behind it. And it’s the trust and the belief. That’s really the Force for me. So I feel like I have it more than someone who wants to just move an object. I definitely feel more powerful and confident assuming this character and portraying her as authentically as we possibly could. With all of this, this storytelling, there’s a lot of weight to it for people have been in love with these characters for so long. So there’s just a part where you just have to truly believe, and that’s just the best kind of pretend.
I’ve seen that before where certain kind of poses and things that you can do to build your confidence and there’s something about that. Because even when you do it it’s like your whole body. That’s something that he would talk about. It’s not a toy, you know? Dave would say ‘It’s not magic, you’re note doing magic.’ So I think it’s really nice because it feels really grounded. And it does show up, even when I’m meditating, I feel that there’s an energy that we have and a power that we have that if we concentrate and focus in on the right ways can move mountains.”
You can listen to the full episode of the podcast here, which contains the entire conversation near the hour mark:
Ahsoka is targeting an August release date on Disney Plus. A second season is reportedly not out of the question, and will depend on the first’s performance on the platform. Stay tuned as the marketing campaign starts heating up with the summer.
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.
