Daisy Ridley Addresses Colin Trevorrow’s Exit From Star Wars: Episode IX

In half a year, audiences all over the world will get to see the Skywalker Saga come to a close when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters. As fans of the galaxy far, far away probably know, the ninth installment in the saga endured a bit of behind-the-scenes drama, when Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow was fired from the project. While we will never quite know what Trevorrow’s initial plans for Episode IX were, franchise star Daisy Ridley recently spoke about his involvement in an interview with Collider.

“He was Josh [Gad’s] guest at [the] Murder on the Orient Express [premiere] and we went for dinner afterwards, and Colin sat next to me and I was like, ‘What’s this gonna be like?’” Ridley explained. “Because all I had heard—I didn’t know what had happened, I just knew that he wasn’t doing it anymore. And he did sort of tell me and sort of not… Actually no we had gone for dinner and stuff, we went for dinner with Michelle, who is a producer. So I sort of knew. I think everything happens for a reason I guess.”

Trevorrow was let go from Episode IX in late 2017, reportedly over creative differences tied to how the saga should come to a close.

“I don’t want to talk too much about it because I don’t want to affect the way that fans get to see these films,” Trevorrow said in a 2018 interview. “When we were kids, these movies came to us from far away. They were a gift. And the more we talk about how they’re made, the more it reveals that they’re just movies. But they’re not just movies, they’re more than that. Beyond that, I got the opportunity to tell a story that is a celebration of everything I believe in, I got to tell it to George Lucas and I got to tell it to Luke Skywalker, and those are experiences I will cherish for the rest of my life.”

In the time since, Lucasfilm brought The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams to complete the film, although he was initially hesitant about doing so.

“I wasn’t supposed to be there. I wasn’t the guy, ya’ know? I was working on some other things, and I had something else that I was assuming would be the next project, if we’d be so lucky,” Abrams explained this past April. “And then [Lucasfilm president] Kathy Kennedy called and said, ‘Would you really, seriously, consider coming aboard?’ And once that started, it all happened pretty quickly. The whole thing was a crazy leap of faith. And there was an actual moment when I nearly said, ‘No, I’m not going to do this.’ I was trepidatious to begin with, getting involved, because I love Star Wars so much and felt like it was … It was almost, on a personal level, a dangerous thing to get too close to something that you care that much about.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker arrives in theaters on December 20th.