Willow Showrunner Reveals How Wes Anderson's Asteroid City Affected the Show's Production

By Jamie Jirak

The fifth episode of Willow was released on Disney+ this week, and it featured the return of a fan-favorite character from the 1988 film as well as the debut of some newcomers. The show has an exciting cast led by Warwick Davis (Willow) and it also includes Tony Revolori as Graydon Hastur. In the new episode, the party encounters Bone Reavers, but they end up being different from what everyone expected. In fact, they all became friends and some of the newcomers had a little fun shaving off Graydon's beard. Afterward, Graydon revealed he did it to impress a girl only to learn "women like beards." It's a funny and cute little moment, but it turns out there was a bigger reason for the scene. Showrunner Jonathan Kasdan took to Twitter today to reveal that Wes Anderson wanted Revolori to be clean-shaved for his upcoming movie, Asteroid City. 

"WILLOW TIDBIT: for his upcoming ASTEROID CITY, Wes Anderson badly wanted a clean-shaven @TonyRevolori, which was a continuity problem for us. But a little rewrite & a big assist from Charlie Rawes, lead to one of my fave bits in ep. 5, proving 'no' is almost never the only answer," Kasdan shared. You can check out his post below:

Who Stars in Asteroid City? 

Revolori will be reuniting with Wes Anderson after working with the director on The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch, but he's not the only exciting name on the cast list. Asteroid City has an expansive cast that includes Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Ed Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Jake Ryan, Grace Edwards, Aristou Meehan, Sophia Lillis, Ethan Lee, Rita Wilson, and Jeff Goldblum. Asteroid City will have a limited theatrical opening on June 16, 2023, with a wider opening following on June 23, 2023.

What Is Graydon's Secret in Willow?

During the fourth episode of Willow, "The Whispers of Nockmaar," it was revealed that Graydon killed his older brother but the newest episode confirmed it was because he was possessed as a kid. ComicBook.com had the chance to chat with Revolori at the Willow premiere, and he talked about his character's big reveal.

"I mean, it's always there from the very beginning and we had a lot of conversations. Jon Kasdan, Max Taylor, and I about where to take this character and how to take him," Revolori explained. "Because in the end, I think in the edit, they found that he was a little bit clueless in the beginning, but he is actually smarter than he lets on. But it's one of those things where you don't really know what's going to happen in the edit. But we wanted to make sure that people weren't sure about him, people weren't okay about him. And even all the way throughout the show that they weren't okay with him. And I could not wait to do episode four because it's just such an emotionally turmoil character who just can't forgive himself. And that's how many of us can't forgive ourselves for ...  And beyond that, my family's here today and my older brother got to play my older brother, my younger brother got to play younger me."

The first five episodes of Willow are streaming on Disney+. 

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