‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ Actress Amandla Stenberg Reveals Show Will Be An Exploration Of “The Rules In The Galaxy Around How The Force Can Be Used”

May 23, 2024 ·

John F. Trent

LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 07: attends the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 attends the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Disney)

Star Wars: The Acolyte actress Amandla Stenberg reveals that the upcoming show will be exploring how the Force can be used in Star Wars.

Mae (Amandla Stenberg) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©.

Speaking to Empire to promote the upcoming show, Stenberg detailed how the show was pitched to her, “I understood that it was an exploration of the light and dark parts of ourselves, and the rules in the galaxy around how the Force can be used. Which was insane, to experience that.”

Later in the interview she was also asked about how the Light Side and Dark Side dynamic works for her character, Mae, with Empire’s Ben Travis stating, “I’m getting she’s more towards the dark side…” Stenberg responded, “I think it’s a lot more complicated than that, which is the point of the show. Hopefully, if we did our job right, the show makes it an interesting interrogation into what it means to be on the light side or the dark side.

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She also provided more information regarding how the show will treat the Force noting it will eschew from Lucas’ canon, “It’s a time in the galaxy where the way people use the Force is… in canon, it’s very expansive. It doesn’t necessarily have the more rigid conceptions that it might have later in the Galactic Republic.”

“So that provides us the opportunity to maybe explore the different way this character relates to the Force,” she added.

READ: ‘The Acolyte’ Showrunner Leslye Headland Implies The Show Is A Lesbian Series With A Star Wars Veneer

She later reiterated comments Leslye Headland made about the show regarding it being a lesbian show with a Star Wars veneer. Speaking with Empire at Star Wars Celebration back in 2023, Headland detailed, “When I saw Frozen as a grown a** woman, I cried through the entire movie. There was just something about the relationship between the sisters, the like devillainization of the classic kind of fairy tale ‘bad guy,’ you know, the concept of true love being between two sisters and not a heterosexual relationship. It just destroyed me, completely.”

She continued, “And I thought, ‘Gosh, I would love to make something like this, for lack of a better term, Disney.’ Meaning something that like my parents would have allowed me to see when I was younger as a queer person, but I would have been able to understand as a queer person. And I think I would have had a completely different life. And so I really was inspired by it and was like, ‘God, I would love to make a story like this.’”

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Headland then shared she took this idea and pitched it as The Acolyte, “And so when I was developing this original idea to pitch to [Lucasfilm President] Kathleen [Kennedy], I thought well, ‘You know, it can’t just be that.’ When you’re pitching Star Wars you have to pull from what George [Lucas] was also interested in.”

“It can’t just be like well I’m referencing- especially if you’re gonna set something during the High Republic, end of High Republic into prequels. You don’t have the Skywalker Saga. You can’t reference a character that was created by George and/or Filoni. You have to create your own new characters,” she added.

LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 07: attends the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 attends the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Disney)

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Headland had previously informed Empire that her pitch was Kill Bill meets Frozen. She explained, “It is sort of a joke. But it was my elevator pitch to Kathy [Kennedy]: ‘I want to take that revisionist version of female villains that you see in a fairy-tale media and tell it through that lens.”

She also informed the outlet, “When I was a young queer girl, I was just hanging out with Ursula the sea witch [from The Little Mermaid]. As a queer girl growing up, if you don’t identify with the heroes, and the villains show up and they’re all queer-coded, you’re like — yes, that’s me!”

“As a queer filmmaker, you’re gonna see some camp. Inevitably! But I would say that tonally, our references are darker,” she added.

Stenberg reiterated these comments telling Empire, “So I got Leslye’s conceptual tagline that she’s been sharing, which is that it was a mixture of Frozen and Kill Bill. Which immediately sucker-punched me, because Kill Bill is one of my favourite movies.”

She added, “Going into filming, Leslye held a screening for the entire cast and crew of Kill Bill. And then I was told that it would be at the height of the High Republic era – which was so interesting to me, because I feel like the further back you go in Star Wars lore, the more fascinating it gets, and the more concepts people within Lucasfilm have started to dig into and explore. It creates a really rich, fascinating web.”