Gwendoline Christie Is Proud To Be Star Wars’ First Female Villain

In the Star Wars universe, many actors have made impactful and lasting impressions on audience even though they are covered head-to-toe in their costumes, like David Prowse as Darth Vader, Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, Anthony Daniels as C3PO and Jeremy Bulloch as Boba Fett. Aside from not showing their melons on screen, they all also happen to be men. However, that will change when The Force Awakens arrives in December.

Gwendoline Christie, best known for playing Brienne of Tarth on HBO’s Game of Thrones, is playing Captain Phasma, a female character covered head-to-toe in chrome stormtrooper armor. “We know very little about her at this stage, but what I think people are drawn to is that this is a very progressive female character,” Christie told Entertainment Weekly. “We see Captain Phasma, and we see the costume from head to toe, and we know that it is a woman. But we are used to, in our media, connecting to female characters via the way that they look, from the way they are made flesh.”

Besides not having to put up with a form-fitting costume, Captain Phasma will mark the fist time a woman has been portrayed as a villain in the Star Wars live-action films (there are female villains in the cartoons, comic books, and novels that are in-canon with the films, of course). That’s a fact not lost on the 6-foot-3 actress. “She’s Star Wars‘ first female villain,” she pointed out. “It’s incredible, it’s timely, and I’m very proud to be a part of it.”

Lucasfilm and visionary director J.J. Abrams join forces to take you back again to a galaxy far, far away as Star Wars returns to the big screen with Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The film stars Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew and Max Von Sydow. Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk are producing with Tommy Harper and Jason McGatlin serving as executive producers. The screenplay is by Lawrence Kasdan & J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in U.S. theaters on December 18.