Meet Young Rey from Star Wars: The Force Awakens!
Meet Hollywood newcomer, 8-year-old Picayune native Cailey Fleming who played young Rey in the Forceback vision that Daisy Ridley’s character experiences in Maz Kanata’s castle basement.
Back in June 2015, one of our notable Cantina members MagnarTheGreat, alerted me that there was an audition happening at Paramount Pictures (Bad Robot moved to Paramount in 2006) in California for an untitled J.J. Abrams movie. By that time several child actors had posted on Instagram and Twitter about their experience HERE, HERE and HERE.
At that time I thought this audition was for one of the upcoming Paramount projects that J.J. Abrams was producing. It didn’t make sense since the audition happened in June, and we know that the movie wrapped filming in November 2014.
Now a new interview with the girl who plays young Rey in the movie suggests that these auditions were probably indeed for The Force Awakens.
From Picayuneitem:
Cailey said she was excited when she discovered she had booked film. However, she didn’t find out it was a Star Wars film until she arrived on set in California. “It was fun and we filmed at the headquarters on the roof,” Cailey said. “I wore war clothes and had makup on my arms to make it look like I was in the desert. I met Daisy Ridley, who was really nice. The Director, J.J. Abrams was super nice and he sent me to Disneyland. Every time we did a scene he would yell “cut” and bring strawberries.”
Last Thursday, surrounded by family and friends, Cailey saw herself on the big screen for the first time.
“Before I saw my face, you could hear my voice, so I knew when my part was coming and then my face came on the big screen,” she said. “I was excited. It’s a good movie and people should see it.”
We caught a quick glimpse of young Rey in the movie when she was carried away by Unkar Plutt while her parents were flying away from Jakku.
Since young Rey was never mentioned in the leaked shooting schedule, Alan Dean Foster’s novel, and the junior novel, and considering the late audition in June, we can conclude that this character was a very late addition to the story.
Founder of SWNN, MNN and The Cantina forums.
Born on April 24, 1980.
corrupting kids with strawberries and disneyland tours
You can probably expect to this little girl in some stupid Disney Channel show within the next five years.
Doubt that, this girl has already surpassed that level :p
They gonna use her in future Rey flashback scenes, in every movie will be a scene showing Rey in the age the actress is in, she is signed for 6 movies
Unfortunately when she becomes adult Disney will have to kill her
Disney Channel shows… yuck. too bad rebel’s is tecnically a disney XD channel show
Might be one of the changes/additions requested by Rian Johnson.
why is that? people keep saying that and i don’t understand why, why this didn’t come from JJ or wouldn’t be in the movie regardless of Rian?
It`s interesting how and when they decided to shoot this.
I assume it came at the request of Rian Johnson – I cant think of any other reason why they would shoot it that late in post-production.
Probably.
Young Rey had way more convincing acting chops than that piece of wood currently cast as Superman.
First time we ever see the child version of a character and their older selves within the same film. I’d like to see this done with some of the OT ones like they did in Antman.
The de-aging done in Antman was truly impressive. I wouldn’t mind them doing the same with Luke at some point to start filling in the gaps between Jedi and TFA.
I thought that’s why Mark Hamill supposedly shot another scene the day after he shaved at the end of the TFA shoot. But now I don’t know how true that was and of/of it was just scrapped.
Here we have the Han Solo movie sorted then! No need to cast anyone!
God do you know how expensive that would be? Lol but it would surely be the best thing they can do
They might wait till XI to do it since it’s probably pretty expensive and time consuming now but will be less so in a few years. Huge leap over the crappy job in Tron Legacy with Jeff Bridges. So it can only get better over time, I’d like to see an entire film done that with if it all possible,
Yes because it’s well known Star wars has a limited budget!
Unlike megacorporation Disney, Lucasfilm could afford to be reckless with it’s budget. Why do you think Rebels looks so much cheaper than TCW and the merchandise for TFA is so much more chinzier han we got during the PT?
I’m sure it can be done, and they certainly have some of the best in the biz working on these films.
Her 3 seconds on screen was the best child-actor performance in the Star Wars saga to date.
She took the title from that kid on Cloud City!
The sad thing is that is not, in any way, an exaggeration.
Daniel Logan was the worst
*slow clap
Come on, doesn’t Warwick Davis get any love? You might not like the Ewoks, but that 11 year old did a good job with the character he was given to act, managing to emote pretty well from under a big furry costume…
Do we know it was Rey’s parents who dropped her off and flew away?
No. There has been no confirmation, but she does say that she’s waiting for her family to return, so presumably it was her parents or at least one of them. But we don’t know for sure.
I’ll agree with you, but I wonder WHY she was left with somebody that clearly was bad news. I guess we’ll see.
I wonder where/how Rey eventually received such expert dental care on Jakku.
Those magic muffins have dental hygienic properties that whiten your teeth and keep your mouth free of plaque and tartar build up. They even work to prevent gingivitis. That’s what I’m going with. đ
Actually there are ancient tribes around the world who had good teeth – helps if you don[t have sweet things in your diet!
Amazing that Rey has had the exact same hairstyle her entire life. Even Leia dropped the buns after the first movie.
Not many hair stylists in the sparsely populated desert, I guess.
That’s on purpose she thinks she need to look the same if the people that drop her on Jakku come back they would recognize her
Strangely enough, that’s actually a solid answer. She grew up but part of her may still think that. I like the idea.
She is very much a child at heart, she didn’t have any real connection to anyone her entire life until she met BB-8 is like emotionally she is still a child
Maybe this was one of those things that JJ adjusted (at Rian Johnson’s request) to link up with Rian’s ep VIII that we’ve heard about?
Wow thats interesting. I thought she was good in that force vision. đ