‘The Acolyte’ Showrunner Leslye Headland Explains Why She Views The Sith Villain As An Avatar For Herself

July 22, 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)

Leslye Headland, the showrunner for The Acolyte, recently explained why she sees Manny Jacinto’s Sith villain as an avatar for herself.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: Leslye Headland attends the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

In an interview with Collider’s Maggie Lovitt following the show’s sixth episode Headland revealed that she sees Jacinto’s Sith villain as an avatar of herself.

Headland was asked by Lovitt, “Aside from the obvious allusions to other ships, are there any other enemies-to-lovers dynamics that informed the decisions you were making as you were playing with these two characters?”

She answered, “There are so many, but I am going to say no because I was really working from muscle memory. I didn’t want it to quote something else. I wanted to just click into the kind of stuff that I wrote when I was in high school. I love these characters. Nobody wants to ship these characters more than I do. I love them so much. I love The Stranger. There’s always a character that’s an avatar for me that I really, really love. In Russian Doll, it was Charlie [Barnett’s] character, Alan.”

(L-R): Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) and the Stranger in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©.

READ: Leslye Headland Begs ‘The Acolyte’ Viewers To Launch Social Media Campaign For A Second Season

From there, she explained, “The Stranger is obviously a bad*ss, but I just mean much more than his character. I’m not going around doing fantastic lightsaber battles and murdering people and being an all-around badass, but I would say that what he talks about in this episode and what he talked about in [Episode] 5 is something I really dug down.”

She continued, “Then Osha’s inner conflict fits with his ideology, and yet they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum just like she and her sister started at the beginning of the show. I wanted to stay true to my characters. I tried my best to just stick to the tropes and the stuff that I loved and tried not to think about, especially [with] the classics. I think it would have been a little too quotes-around-it if that were the case.”

Headland had previously revealed to The New York Times how she was inserting her own family drama into the show telling the outlet, “I have a very strained relationship with my youngest sister, and I feel like one of the reasons it is strained is that we both see each other as the bad guy.”

“And if I was going to tell a story about bad guys, it seemed to me that the place to start should be a familial relationship where one person is adamantly convinced of her correctness and the other person is also adamantly convinced of her correctness,” she continued. “We don’t speak. I think this will be a surprise to her.”

Leslye Headland attends the UK Premiere of Lucasfilm’s ‘The Acolyte’ at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square in London, on May 28, 2024. (Photo by StillMoving.Net for Disney)

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Now, in an interview with Collider following the conclusion of the first season, Headland provided more details as to why she sees Manny Jacinto’s Sith villain as an avatar for herself.

She said, “When you asked about why I relate with the character so much, when he reveals himself and makes his statement of purpose, I had to rewrite that scene many times because the villain outlining his plan is so ridiculous. Really, the ultimate version of that is Heath Ledger’s Joker. You’re never gonna hit that, but that’s the goal.”

“So, when I was rewriting the scene with him, all the way up to shooting, I was on the treadmill being like, ‘What is he gonna say?!’ And my wife, who is a huge part of my creative process, finally she said, ”What do you wanna say? Stop thinking of it like you have to somehow tap into a different guy.’”

Headland reiterated, “And again, Manny was giving this incredible performance all through this, so I’m like, ‘How do I live up to this performance?’ My wife was like, ‘What do you want to say?'”

She then revealed what she wanted to say, “I was like, ‘I wanna say that people don’t want me to exist as a gay woman, as a woman in this particular space, working in this wild sandbox.’ There was a whole crew of people who believed in me, but deep down, I felt like, ‘I am unaccepted for who I am because of what I believe in and wanting to wield my power the way I’d like without having to answer to the legion of people that just exist out there.'”

READ: ‘Bone Tomahawk’ Producer Claims ‘The Acolyte’ Showrunner Leslye Headland Used To Be Based And “Would Have S**T All Over The Acolyte For Its Stupid Gender Motives And Dumb Physics”

Interestingly, Dallas Sonnier, the producer of Bone Tomahawk and a former colleague of Headland’s, did indeed call her out and claimed Headland would have been first in line to dunk on The Acolyte due to its embrace of controversial agenda.

Sonnier wrote on Instagram, “The Acolyte makes me sad on many levels. Star Wars is awesome. Was awesome.”

He continued, “I discovered Leslye in a 15 seat theatre on Santa Monica Blvd back in 2007. Like Greta [Gerwig], I locked arms with this woman and forced Hollywood to pay attention to her. Leslye was so frickin’ based back then.”

“She would have s**t all over The Acolyte for its stupid gender motives and dumb physics like fire in outer space,” he added.

Dallas Sonnier Press Photo. Photo Credit: Dallas Sonnier, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Sonnier then stated, “Last saw her in 2017. And she was still her old self. But her reboot of Heathers (co-starring an even younger Brett Cooper !!!) soon got cancelled. Very publicly for all the wrong dumb reasons. And it really shook her spirits. I saw her lean into modern victim mentality more with Russian Doll on Netflix, and really no turning back from there…”

He then speculates she got divisive and progressive in order to be accepted by Hollywood, “Hey look, we all get older, we all gotta pay the bills, and the world cracked. I get it.”

“But it is just sad to see someone I managed for over 8 years, and cared so much about become the very thing she and I would mock mercilessly for a decade,” Sonnier concluded.

Dallas Sonnier via Instagram Stories

READ: Leslye Headland Claims That The Head Witch Turning Into An Ashy Dementor Was Actually Her “Transforming Into The Force”

Nevertheless, Headland projected herself and her ideas onto everyone else, “By the way, I think everybody feels this way. I think that’s why it resonates when you’re honest about yourself, and you get personal about it. When he says, ‘I want freedom,’ that’s what I want. I just want freedom. I want to be able to just be out there and be myself and be the type of artist I want to be without having to answer to anybody. That’s why I feel so close to him.”

She continued, “I also feel like when I get in leadership positions, I do get very vulnerable; I’m not afraid to cry. You know what I mean? There’s this feeling [for] female directors that they can’t cry. I was like, ‘I’m gonna cry because this is my dream. I can’t believe we’re making this.’ I am truly so impressed by everyone who has put their faith in me. That is why he represents the avatar.”

Lovitt then interjected, “I think that’s what makes villains so compelling because there is that little piece of every writer in the villains, kind of pushing an idea that they have harbored within them. The villain is a great proxy for getting those feelings out.”

Headland replied, “Absolutely. I very rarely put myself into the protagonist because I think the protagonist has to be the protagonist. They might have a sprinkling of me, certainly Osha and Mae, the family conflict, the switching of sides, being really certain that you know one thing, the betrayal of the father, the rejection of the fraternal protectionism, and saying, ‘I am now my own person.’ That stuff I definitely relate with, but The Stranger is my shadow self, for sure.”

READ: Leslye Headland Admits She’s Using Star Wars And ‘The Acolyte’ To Push Discussion On Gender Norms: “It’s So Wildly Intentional”

For those who did not watch the show, what Headland is referring to is what Qimir tells Master Sol in the show’s fifth episode when Sol asks him what he wants.

Qimir responds, “Freedom. The freedom to wield my power the way I like. Without having to answer to Jedi like you. I want a pupil, an Acolyte. But this one went back on our deal. She exposed me. So, now I have to kill every single last one of you. I don’t make the rules. The Jedi do. And the Jedi say I can’t exist. They see my face, they all die.”

This moment in the show was one of the few compelling moments that felt true to Star Wars. It’s because the idea of freedom she is talking about is in reality slavery to passion something the Sith do indeed engage in, and it is indeed wrong to do.

READ: ‘The Acolyte’ Showrunner Leslye Headland Claims Negative Reviews For Her Show Are “Review Bombing,” She Previously Claimed She Was Sad The Show Was Being Dismantled

This idea of freedom that is contrary to virtue is perfect for a villain, and it’s not the first time we’ve ever seen it (think Brave New World). However, given Headland sees Qimir as an avatar for herself, she tries to twist this objectively evil ideology to make it somehow good or at the very least “morally grey.”

She explained how she attempted to do this later in the interview, “But here’s the thing, on an emotional level for the audience, now having watched Episode 7, you’ve got the light side and the dark side, Jedi and Sith, but who are you rooting for? Am I finding myself now rooting for The Stranger, who I feel incredibly drawn to, who’s made himself literally exposed, and Sol, who has been hiding this thing? So, that sort of emotional impact of, like, ‘I hate what Sol did, but this is the bad guy! He’s got the red lightsaber. What am I supposed to do?’”

Headland continued, “With the girls, it’s similar. Who am I rooting for? I’m kind of rooting for Osha because I want her to restore her strength in the Force and tap into her negative feelings, but I’m also rooting for Mae because she was framed by everybody. She was on a quest to find justice in her own way, knowing that the institution would never hold these people accountable.”