Joining a popular franchise while it’s already underway can be daunting for actors, and over the past three decades, we’ve seen many talented performers falter after taking a role in Star Wars. For some, it has been the pressure of the spotlight or interactions with malicious “fans,” but for Katee Sackhoff, it was the acting itself. Sackhoff was already an established veteran of the sci-fi genre when she took the role of Bo-Katan Kryze on The Mandalorian, and had even been voicing the character for years in animation. However, when it came time to bring the character to life in live-action, Sackhoff says it was surprisingly challenging as an actor. She explained in detail last week on her podcast, in a conversation with her former co-star Tahmoh Penikett.
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Sackhoff and Penikett were catching up on last week’s episode of The Sackhoff Show when Sackhoff revealed that she had hired an acting coach for the first time in her career. Penikett was floored, questioning why Sackhoff would need coaching with all her experience and natural talent. “What had happened was, I lost all my confidence after Mandalorian,” she said bluntly. “All of it.”
“My style of acting has always just been, ‘Your first instinct is the right instinct, do that. Play the reality of the situation,’” Sackhoff went on. “And I’ve never really played a character, you know what I mean? Like, I’ve always played [characters who were] two steps removed from myself, in a sense. It always felt grounded in some part of my belly of who I was.”
“Bo-Katan is nowhere near who I am as a human being,” Sackhoff said. “Her life, what she wants — like, I didn’t understand her. I mean, as much as I understood her, I never felt her, in my stomach. I never identified with her. I didn’t know how to find her. And it broke me! I started doubting everything about myself. I’m not a strong auditioner on tape, and I was having to put myself on tape. I wasn’t booking anything, and for three years, I basically didn’t work. It just destroyed my confidence…”
Sackhoff eventually overhauled her approach, hiring a new manager who helped her find an acting coach to get her back on track. Even then, she said the coach didn’t try to teach her how to act from scratch — instead, she helped Sackhoff to reconnect with the skills she had used before, and broaden them to include unfamiliar characters like Bo-Katan.
Thankfully, Sackhoff told Penikett that she is feeling like her old self again, which is good news as she has some exciting work ahead of her. She has an undisclosed role in the upcoming series adaptation of Carrie at Prime Video, which is now in production. Those that want to revisit Sackhoff’s Star Wars performance can stream The Mandalorian on Disney+.
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