Live-Action Ezra Bridger Actor Eman Esfandi Explains Why He Didn’t Watch Any Of ‘Star Wars Rebels’ Before ‘Ahsoka’ Series

December 5, 2023 ·

John F. Trent

Actor Eman Esfandi, who plays the live-action version of Ezra Bridger in Star Wars: Ahsoka, explained why he did not watch any Star Wars Rebels episodes to prepare for the role.

(L-R): Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi) and Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©.A. Comic-Con, The Direct reports that Esfandi explained, “I admittedly – which, if you would have found this out prior you might have taken my head off, but maybe now you don’t think that – I didn’t watch all of Rebels.”

He continued, “I didn’t want to get too caught up in the younger version of Ezra. I felt very connected to an older version the way he was written.”

[caption id="attachment_16218" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] (L-R): Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi) and Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

While he didn’t watch all of the episodes, Esfandi did claim he watched a number of them that featured Sabine and Ahsoka, but only after he had wrapped production.

He relayed, “And I watched the episodes where [Ezra] had scenes very intimately with like Sabine and the Spectre crew and Ahsoka in particular. And just to understand that dynamic. Obviously, the hologram message, and also my TikTok became flooded with the scene–rest in peace Kanan. So I was inundated with a lot of it.”

Esfandi went on to explain why he did not feel the need to watch the animated series, “But I didn’t watch it until after the show. Because Dave [Filoni], and everyone else who was directing me were so like, reaffirming. Like, ‘No, yeah, that’s Ezra. Oh, that’s also so Ezra.’ And we’d be backstage, ‘That’s Ezra.’ I was like, okay, so then I think we’re good. Like, I’ll watch it later. So I didn’t actually do the immersion thing until all the way after shooting.”

(L-R): Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi) and Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved

While Filoni was the creator of the Ahsoka series, his adherence to Star Wars canon has been atrocious. In fact, back in April during Star Wars Celebration, Filoni made it clear he does not seemingly care about Star Wars canon at all.

He told ScreenRant, “People get into all of these debates of what’s canon, what’s not, and sometimes forget just the special nature of telling a good story and creating great characters.”

“Part of the fan debate in the past always used to be what’s canon, what’s not, because there was George and we always knew George was the canon. I look at it very broadly and just say, there’s just a love of Star Wars. Because I knew George, I worked with him. None of us are going to be him, but we love the galaxy he created and we are very much a product of it, growing up with it,” Filoni added.

Filoni also informed Vanity Fair back in 2020 he was open to changing Star Wars even characters’ physical descriptions.

Vanity Fair’s Anthony Breznican asked, “What else had to happen as part of the transformation into Ahsoka?”

Filoni responded, “I said, ‘Well, Ahsoka’s eyes are blue and yours are not, but I don’t want you to worry about it. If you don’t want to go for that, we can just say that in this version they’re not.’ And Rosario insisted. She’s like, ‘No, no, no. Let me try it.’”

LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 08: Dave Filoni onstage during the Ahsoka panel at the Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 08, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Kate Green/Getty Images for Disney)

More recently, Filoniu claimed that “everyone can become a Jedi and everyone can not become a Jedi.”

He explained to Entertainment Weekly’s Dagobah Dispatch podcast, “But very fundamentally, if you just pay attention to the films George made, you understand that the Force is an energy field created by all living things. So the Force emanates from all of us and everything, right, all living things. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together. So she’s not absent from the Force. She is part of the Force.”

“Part of the problem is, it’s like anything in life that you want to do, you have to train hard to acquire the skills. … Everyone can become a Jedi and everybody can not become a Jedi because we know there are things in our life, take martial arts skills or even something like yoga and say that if I did that, that’s better for me, that’s healthier, that’s empowering,” Filoni continued. “So why don’t we all do it? It takes time, it takes commitment, and even people that do it don’t all turn out to be great at it.”

“So in Star Wars, I’m sure people are aware, obviously, that there are Jedi Knights. Fewer people are even aware that the Force exists. They don’t understand how the Jedi do what they do. But like Qui-Gon says to train to become a Jedi it’s a hard life, it’s difficult to do. Many people would never even come close to achieving their goal of manipulating an object without the Force let alone pushing or pulling somebody else because that person’s will is set against you and that makes it even harder,” he asserted.

While he made these comments, he directly contradicted them in the Ahsoka series. Sabine Wren is not only shown to have an inability to use the Force — she can not move a simple cup — but the droid Huyang also informs her that her aptitude for the Force would fall short of all the Padawans he’s known.

Nevertheless, Filoni and the Lucasfilm production team behind the show would have Sabine’s aptitude for the Force explode when she’s in a life or death situation. She’s able to easily pull a lightsaber to her and then just moments later is able to Force push Ezra Bridger onto Thrawn’s Chimera some 500+ feet in the air. She did not undergo a lifetime of training to master the Force. She got an instant power boost when the plot needed it.

As for how Bridger was depicted in the show, he seemed to lack the motivations of the character from Star Wars Rebels. He had resigned himself to being an exile and traveling the planet with a bunch of hermit crab people.

He did not seem to be taking the fight to Thrawn at all, but instead was on the run from him. The Bridger from Star Wars Rebels would have been conducting guerilla warfare against Thrawn and the Nightsisters similar to Mel Gibson’s Benjamin Martin in The Patriot.

Maybe if Esfandi had watched Rebels, he might have been able to correct Filoni on his lack of adherence to canon much like Rosario Dawson did with Ahsoka’s eye color.