The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm’s upcoming Star Wars series, The Acolyte, is confirmed to feature a lesbian character.
(Center): Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
The New York Times’ Brooks Barnes reports, “Jodie Turner-Smith plays the lesbian leader of a regal coven of witches.”
This report is not at all surprising given showrunner Leslye Headland made it clear the series was lesbian fan fiction with a Star Wars veneer. During Star Wars Celebration last year she said, “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.’”
LGBTQ+ activist Leslye Headland is a new director in the Star Wars franchise:
Her goal for the films? To make it LGBTQ-inclusive and similar to Disney fairy tales. pic.twitter.com/Anfkn9RciK
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 19, 2024
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.
(L-R): Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-jae and Director Leslye Headland on the set of Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
Jodie Turner-Smith had previously described her character as a “powerful leader” at Star Wars Celebration. She said, “My character, you know, she’s a powerful leader. She’s a powerful leader in a very woman-centered world, which I was very excited to kind of be in that because I feel like Star Wars is very patriarchal. So it was kind of cool to have this sort of woman-centered figure.”
She continued, “And you know she’s really sort of going through a struggle because I mean that’s Star Wars, right? She’s really kind of like in this sort of quandary and that’s sort of her journey is to to kind of go through this struggle between two ideas.”
Speaking with ScreenRant she also noted, “She leads women, you know, which is I think often in Star Wars it’s all very like sort of patriarchally driven. So to sort of have this character who’s kind of in this matriarchal world, I thought really cool and interesting and different. Yeah, and very powerful. I do use the Force, but I am not a Jedi or a Sith.”
She added, “We don’t ever really see these more like martiarchal energies. … I think we already kind of started to center women in this world with the latest movies and films. And we’re seeing it as well in a lot of the other TV shows too. But I think it’s often very much about like a man’s journey and this is less about that.”
She concluded, ““We have a black lead. And that alone is so groundbreaking, and amazing, and encouraging, and exciting as a fan. And when it’s someone as talented as Amandla, as an actor that was very exciting. That’s made me wanna sign up for it because I respect her so much as an actor, and she’s talented. You guys have no idea what’s coming.”
What do you make of this confirmation from Lucasfilm?
NEXT: Leslye Headland Declares People Opposed To Race-Based Casting Are Not Star Wars Fans
