UPDATE: Dave Filoni Talks Ahsoka’s Origin and Mentoring Sabine in ‘Master and Apprentice’ Featurette
Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau, Rosario Dawson, Carrie Beck and Kathleen Kennedy all came together to talk about the Ahsoka series and detail the character’s behind the scenes origin in the new Master & Apprentice featurette, first teased by IGN earlier in the day. The full featurette is embedded below.
The featurette was initially teased on IGN‘s YouTube channel, and how the famous line of Jedi masters and apprentices is extended in the show with Ahsoka and Sabine.
Dave Filoni spoke about how their relationship becomes the latest in a long line of famous masters and apprentices, connecting Yoda all the way to Sabine Wren.
Star Wars always has these great master-apprentice relationships.
When you step into Star Wars, you are part of a legacy. And we had to uphold that history, and yet do this completely new and different thing. From the beginning of the series, Ahsoka is out there on the fringe of the galaxy. When she hears whispers of this warlord’s return, she decides to enlist her friends’ help.
I’m telling this story about this mentor-student relationship that passes from Anakin to Ahsoka to Sabine. It’s quite extraordinary to bring this to life.
Jon Favreau also acknowledges how important that master and apprentice trope is to Star Wars.
It’s very much the idea of apprenticeship. The need for those two groups to come together in order to pass down the knowledge and to help save the world, in the case of Star Wars.
Carrie Beck, also acting as executive producer, points out just how old that line of very famous masters and apprentices is.
All of that wisdom gets passed down over those generations. We have Qui-Gon Jinn, who is the master of Obi-Wan, who is the master of Anakin Skywalker. And by being trained by Anakin, Ahsoka is part of that legacy as well.
Getting away from the master and apprentice theme, Dave Filoni tells the familiar story of how Ahsoka was created, detailing his surprise when learning that George Lucas wanted to give Anakin Skywalker a padawan in The Clone Wars.
Originally, we didn’t know exactly what The Clone Wars was going to be. There was a Jedi, and there was a padawan. We thought, we’ll put them on adventures. But George had other ideas.
He says “Well, let’s give Anakin Skywalker a padawan.” And I was like, “Anakin doesn’t have a padawan.” And he just looked at me and said, “Anakin has a padawan.” And that was basically it. That’s how Ahsoka came about.
We cast Ashley Eckstein to be the voice of the character, and she’s fantastic in The Clone Wars and Rebels.
Jon Favreau spoke about their enthusiasm to bring the character of Ahsoka to live action, as they eventually did in The Mandalorian season 2, stating that “for a character that has such depth and complexity, to bring that to live action made a tremendous amount of sense.”
They obviously wanted to get the casting right, and Kathleen Kennedy heaped praise on Rosario Dawson, who they cast in the role: “Rosario Dawson is such an incredibly powerful actress, and she loves this character.” Rosario herself spoke about what it was like to first portray the character and how keen she was to reprise the role.
I’m playing someone who is an absolute expert. I really wanted to be able to physicalize that as much as possible.
No matter how tired I was, I was like, “Sign me up for some more! Sign me up for some more!”
Fans will also be glad to know that Filoni understands that a series about a former Jedi needed to include lots of high quality lightsaber action.
There has to be a lot of lightsaber fights, and they have to be good because our fans know the difference.
Ahsoka comes out next week, Wednesday, August 23. There will doubtless be more featurettes and TV spots released before then, so check back in with Star Wars News Net for more Star Wars news as it breaks.
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
