Laura Dern played Vice Admiral Holdo in the Rian Johnson-directed movie, which came out in 2017. And recalling when she was first offered the role, she said Johnson was speaking to her about it at great lengths before she realised it was anything even like a Star Wars project.
In a video for Vanity Fair, she recalled: “Rian Johnson invited me to lunch to talk about a role in a movie.
“He started to talk about this thing he was writing and how he was seeing it, and describing this world. ‘It’s just like in space, when everything is so overwhelming and you have to take command of your ship.’
“And I was like, ‘my God, yes, that’s it! So where does it take place?’
“And he was like, ‘no, it’s space’.
“And I said, ‘I know, I hear that, I get it as a parallel, but where is it? In small-town America…?’
“And he was like, ‘no, no, no… it’s Star Wars’.
“I was like, ‘are you f**king kidding, I’m sorry, you’re making a Star Wars movie?!”
She laughed: “He did 10 minutes describing a Star Wars movie and I thought it was some indie movie.”
Dern recalled of her first day filming: “I got to set and they rolled camera and I opened my eyes, and they yelled ‘action’, and I was staring at C-3PO… and I started to cry.
“Literally I had to cut, it was so shocking. Because we’ve all pretended in our rooms at six, to have a lightsaber… it’s magic. What an amazing thing to be part of that.”
For obvious reasons, Dern is not expected to reprise her role in the upcoming Star Wars: Episode 9.
That trilogy finale is currently being filmed and will be released this December.