There are a lot of Star Wars projects to look forward to from Disney+, including The Acolyte. The new series is expected to be a mystery thriller that is set at the end of the High Republic, roughly a full century before the events of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and will be entranced in a world of “shadowy secrets and emerging dark side powers.” The Acolyte is set to star Amandla Stenberg (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game), Manny Jacinto (The Good Place), Jodie Turner-Smith (Murder Mystery 2), Dafne Keen (Logan), Charlie Barnett (Russian Doll), and more. Recently, some of the cast spoke with Entertainment Weekly‘s Dagobah Dispatch podcast about the show’s inclusivity.
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“You see the progress that Star Wars is making across the board in all of the streaming series,” Stenberg shared, noting the difficulties minority fans and actors have endured. “When it comes to the world of fantasy and sci-fi in general, it hasn’t felt like a safe space always for people of color,” Stenberg explained. “And it’s been a world that I’ve always deeply loved and been invested in. So to be in any way, shape, or form a part of the wave that is ushering in inclusion and safety for Black nerds, it’s my dream come true.”
Turner-Smith also spoke to EW about inclusivity in the upcoming series, saying it was “definitely something I noticed and was really excited about, and was one of the reasons that I chose to step into the world.” Dafne Keen added, “That was definitely a conversation we’ve had on set … It’s really refreshing to walk onto a set as diverse as this one in every sense. We’ve all come from different corners of the world and it’s really great to get so many different people from different backgrounds to create this thing together.”
Charlie Barnett added, “I don’t think I could have ever imagined myself as a Jedi … Because I was not reflected for so many times throughout these films in the past. So to see such a diverse group now, I think it’s going be a really impactful. It’s gonna be [a] cool moment for me for sure, I can tell you that.”
Manny Jacinto shared, “If I’m being candid, this is the first time you’re getting to see an Asian Jedi … It’s a pretty big responsibility. Getting to see [Lee Jung-jae] inspire a new generation of Asian kids to like take up the lightsaber – it’s pretty incredible.”
“I also really loved that our show was much more woman-centered than what I have previously seen in the Star Wars world,” Turner Smith added. “Just from the fact that our incredible showrunner Leslye [Headland] is a genius woman, and the female producers and having Amandla be the person who’s leading our cast – it was a very cool way into this universe, and a way that I feel that people have never necessarily seen before, other than they’re going see Rosario in an amazing woman-centered show as well.”
“I feel like we are part of a wave of more inclusive and beautifully represented Star Wars shows. So that felt really cool. And I felt the importance of that, especially in some of the stuff that I got to where everyone really was excited about what they were seeing and what that would maybe mean for different fans – fans that don’t necessarily look like what you normally think the traditional Star Wars fan looks like. Because if there’s anything that I learned from this show, it’s that the Star Wars fan is varied,” Turner Smith concluded.
Leslye Headland on Joining Star Wars:
“The truth is that I, as a major mega fan, came to them with this idea. And I said, ‘I think the best place to put this is in an era you guys have not quite explored yet,’” Headland revealed to Vanity Fair. “They were very enthusiastic. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to explore that [existing] world, but I think that they already were because The Mandalorian and a lot of the other television projects were really relying on legacy characters.”
Stay tuned for more updates about The Acolyte.
