Star Wars: The Mandalorian Actress Details the Secretive Audition Process

When art comes to the Star Wars franchise, everything Lucasfilm does is shrouded in secrecy. So when it came to their first ever live-action series Star Wars: The Mandalorian, set in the mysterious period between Star Wars: Return of the Jedi and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, they made sure to keep everything under wraps. This made the audition process somewhat unique, especially for actress Emily Swallow who has a key role in the series; Swallow plays the Armorer, the leader of the secretive Mandalorian community hiding out in underground bunkers. She is in charge of crafting the armor for the warriors, and also acts as a voice of guidance and reason among her people.

Swallow recently appeared on the Still Watching podcast for Vanity Fair and revealed new details about her audition process.

“It was remarkably low-key. I didn’t even really know for sure what I was auditioning for,” revealed Swallow. “There hadn’t been anything announced that there was going to be a Star Wars series. It had a code name, and my agent said ‘we think this has something to do with Star Wars but the casting director will neither confirm or deny.’”

The title of the test script Swallow was given was simply titled “Untitled High Budget.”

“The little information I had was that she was a leader of these people, and very comfortable in a position of knowing she had all their respect,” she explained. “One of the coolest things for me in playing her is trusting that she does have that authority without having to be very forceful at all.”

Mandalorian culture played a major role in the first three episodes of the series, showing how the people have been devastated and how they have coped since an event called “the purge.” But that’s not the only part of the series that has people buzzing. We’re of course referring to the Child AKA Baby Yoda, one of the most adorable new additions to the Star Wars franchise.

Executive producer Dave Filoni promised that the character would be a key fixture in the future of the series, but that there will always remain an air of mystery around him — much like Yoda himself.

“It’s exciting but I think there’s a lot of responsibility around it. I mean one of the reasons that I really got interested in this story that Jon as pitched was the subject of this child, and just knowing George (Lucas) and how important the character of Yoda is to him I wanted to make sure that I could help shepherd this idea. I think we still want to keep a lot of things a mystery, we don’t want to go around answering things and making him less special but let’s tell a story that’s interesting and compelling and add to this great galaxy.”

New episodes of Star Wars: The Mandalorian are set to premiere every Friday on the Disney+ streaming service. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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