Star Wars: The Acolyte Adds The Good Place Star Manny Jacinto

The upcoming TV series Star Wars: The Acolyte continues to be one of the most exciting and ambitious projects for the galaxy far, far away, with a new report from Variety revealing that The Good Place star Manny Jacinto has joined the cast of the series. Part of what makes The Acolyte so exciting is that, rather than relying on bringing in big-name performers, the series has been compiling an impressive roster of figures who were breakout components of ensemble adventures, including Jacinto in the wake of his breakout performance of Jason Mendoza in the NBC sitcom. Stay tuned for details on Star Wars: The Acolyte.

Jacinto joins the previously announced stars Amandla Stenberg, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Lee Jung-jae. The series is being developed by Russian Doll‘s Leslye Headland.

In addition to the cast exciting audiences, the new series is set to be the first live-action exploration of an era in the Star Wars series that has yet to be explored in the medium. The Acolyte is said to take place roughly 100 years before the events of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and will explore the early days of the Sith reemergence that would go on to create the Galactic Empire.

This specific time period means that the narrative doesn’t have to draw direct connections to other corners of the franchise, with Headland previously detailing how she aimed to embrace elements from virtually every avenue of Star Wars storytelling.

“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 earlier this year. “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.”

She continued, “I was coming at it as a fan who was much more into the RPG that the Extended Universe feeds on. I came hard at that in the ’90s, and then got introduced to [Star Wars:] The Clone Wars. I knew the timeline really well. And I was like, ‘I think if you want to explore Star Wars from the perspective of the bad guys, the best time to do it is when the bad guys are wildly outnumbered. When they actually are essentially the underdogs, for lack of a better term.’ So this would be that era.”

Stay tuned for details on Star Wars: The Acolyte.

Are you excited that the actor has joined the project? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!