Actress Jodie Turner-Smith, who previously portrayed a race-swapped Anne Boleyn, recently discussed the upcoming Star Wars series, The Acolyte, being helmed by Harvey Weinstein’s former assistant Leslye Headland.
Speaking with Collider, Turner-Smith claimed the series would be “nothing that anyone has seen before inside of that universe.”
The actress first detailed that show will seemingly not be light-hearted like other projects she has been working on. She explained, “Obviously, the subject matter is different. It’s different when everything that you’re doing is light-hearted, and that’s not what I was doing for Star Wars.”
Turner-Smith went on to reveal she didn’t film any scenes with Amandla Stenberg before attempting to hype the series saying, “I got to see a little bit of what they’ve been doing, and I think it’s gonna be epic, and it’s nothing that anyone has seen before inside of that universe.”
Actress Dafne Keen, known for her role as X-23 in Logan and Lyra Silvertongue in His Dark Materials, previously revealed to Tech Radar the series “is a prequel.”
She explained, “As you know, it’s set 100 years before the prequel movies, and it’s kind of an explanation of how the Sith infiltrated the Jedi. It’s a Sith-led story, which has never been done before.”
“It’s been really fun to film – the cast is amazing, and the director and crew are just lovely. The whole experience is wonderful, and I’m already excited for people to see it,” Keen added.
Headland previously confirmed the series is “female-centric” while speaking with YouTuber Fantastic Frankey about the series. She said, “Just because my show is technically yes, ‘female centric,’ meaning it centers around a female protagonist. I don’t think that necessarily excludes men from that space.”
She explained, “Listen, I relate to male characters all the time. Like I root for Mando. Like I root for Luke. I like deeply, deeply… Well, not sure how much I care about Han Solo anymore. When I was little I really liked him. When I watch him now, I’m kind of like, ‘Gosh a lot of my psyche makes sense now. Hmm. Ok.”
“All joking aside, I think that truly, I think that an inclusive space means an inclusive space. But at the same time I think that just because something has a female protagonist doesn’t mean it’s only meant for women,” she added.
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Headland would go on to claim the show would have an Indiana Jones vibe, “I would say it’s in a pocket of the universe and a pocket of the timeline that we don’t know much about. That’s what I can say.”
“When we were pitching I had my designer create literally that Indiana Jones [map] and then we go here and then we go here. Like the little dotted red line. This is our journey. This is where we are going,” she said.
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Speaking with the AV Club Headland also detailed the series would feature political themes.
She relayed, “I mean, it’s funny, because a lot of the feedback that I’ll get—and I use the term feedback very lightly—but when I do go on social media, the feedback is ‘Don’t make Star Wars political.’ I’m like, ‘George Lucas made it political. Those are political films.’”
Headland elaborated, “War is, by nature, political. That’s just what’s up. It’s truly what he was interested in talking about and looking at and digging into. So it’s kind of impossible to tell a story within his universe that doesn’t have to do with something that has to be that the characters see externally reflected in whatever’s happening in the galaxy at that particular time period of when it takes place. You know?”
She concluded, “That’s another thing that we all kind of inherited from him as well, and hope to kind of keep reflecting in the work, hopefully.”
She would also explain to AV Club what her goal for the series is, “My goal here would be to create something that people can interpret in a couple of different ways, as opposed to there being one right way to love or consume a Star Wars product.”
“I think you should, hopefully, be able to utilize it depending on where you are in your life and where you are in your fandom,” she said.
The official description for the show reads, “The Acolyte is a mystery-thriller that will take viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. A former Padawan reunites with her Jedi Master to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.”
No release date for the series has been announced yet.