‘Star Wars: Rebels’ Voice Actress Vanessa Marshall Expresses Interest in Playing Live-Action Mara Jade
Vanessa Marshall, the voice actress behind Hera in Star Wars: Rebels, has expressed a desire to portray the beloved character Mara Jade in live-action. Courtesy of Collider, Marshall was asked during a panel at this year’s Fan Expo in San Francisco whether she’d like to be part of one of Dave Filoni’s ever-expanding projects. Marshall responded by bringing up the Legends character who has yet to make an appearance.
While Marshall was the original voice actress for Hera in Star Wars: Rebels, the role was eventually passed on to Mary Elizabeth Winstead for Ahsoka. Marshall speaks about how she has experience in live-action, and that she eventually wants to make it into a future live-action Star Wars project:
I would love to play Mara Jade. Can you call Dave Filoni and just let him know that I’d love to play Mara Jade? I think we would all just like to be in live-action in some way. We haven’t had the opportunity to do it yet. But my background is in live-action.
Having actors who began in Star Wars animation transition to live-action is not uncommon. The most notable being Lars Mikkelsen for Grand Admiral Thrawn and Katee Sackhoff for Bo-Katan Kryze. There’s been no word on whether or not Mara Jade will eventually come to Star Wars live-action.
Bringing Mara Jade into live-action would be a challenge, however. With the character’s background as an assassin working for the Emperor, and eventually becoming Luke Skywalker’s wife, the character has a lot of ties to legacy characters and may be difficult to fit into the already established timeline created by the sequel trilogy. On the other hand, Dave Filoni and Lucasfilm have drawn a lot of inspiration from the Thrawn trilogy books, where Mara Jade is featured prominently. So perhaps the character is already on the table, being considered.
Dave Filoni has been promoted to a higher leadership position as Chief Creative Officer at Lucasfilm. He is also currently working on a live-action film that’s being promoted as the finale to the live-action universe that began with The Mandalorian. Only time will tell whether or not Mara Jade will make an appearance in live-action Star Wars.
Would you like to see Marshall as Mara Jade or is there someone else that could fit her boots? If you were Filoni, how would you bring the character from Legends to canon, if at all? Let us know in the comments below!
Born and raised in Hawaii, Jay Goodearl runs the YouTube Gaming channel “Good Games, Dude” His channel aims to open up video games to beginners and immediate players and help them understand what makes games the art form that it is.
