In scale terms, such intimacy represents quite a different jumping-off point for a Star Wars story. “Once Star Wars moved to TV, I feel like I’m indebted a little to the table-setting of the shows by David Filoni, Jon Favreau and Tony Gilroy,” Headland says. (That trio is responsible for The Mandalorian, its spin-offs, and the 1977 Star Wars prequel, Andor.)
“The table was set for me to jump off and go to a different place,” Headland says. “So I wouldn’t say reinvent, but I would definitely say that I was allowed to move in my particular direction, I believe, because of how groundbreaking each one of the shows was.
“I hope that it feels different, and that it feels a little bit more, from episode to episode, like a more personal, mysterious [story]. That each episode gives you more information and leaves you on a cliffhanger. But I’m not sure it’s breaking convention, as much as it’s working in a different genre.”
Amandla Stenberg plays Mae, a former Jedi student, in The Acolyte.Credit: Lucasfilm
The era of the High Republic, having not been explored in a Star Wars television series or film, presented Headland with a conundrum. The era has been touched on in comic books, but such deeper lore is both limited in scope and, typically, reserved only for diehard Star Wars fans.
“There is a lot of [Star Wars] iconography that obviously we can’t rely on,” Headland says. “There isn’t a stormtrooper. There isn’t a Skywalker in our show, for example. There was a new look, all of those things and iconography you are going to recognise, lots of lightsabers. And there was this fun blank canvas.”
There is also a shroud of secrecy worthy of Emperor Palpatine himself. Few details about the show have been officially released. There are clues online about the other characters in the story: a Jedi knight named Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett), the leader of a coven of Force witches Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith), and Kelnacca (Joonas Suotamo), a loner Wookiee Jedi.
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But details about the story are thin, except one promising anecdote – during the pitching phase of the series, Headland had described it in meetings with Lucasfilm as “Frozen meets Kill Bill”. It is also the first Star Wars story to explore the Sith — the ancient evil sect that taps into the dark side of the Force — in its infancy.
The show’s star, 25-year-old singer/actor Stenberg, concurs. “It’s very accurate,” she says of the show’s Frozen-meets-Kill-Bill descriptor.
So, I ask ... you’re badass Elsa? “I can’t say too much as to why,” Stenberg replies. “But Frozen, I think, in any good narrative fashion, challenges you around who’s the good guy, who’s the bad guy, and why they are the way that they are. And Kill Bill ... is a story about vengeance.”
As the show’s heroine — or would anti-heroine be a better term? — what is known about Mae is that she is a former Padawan learner: that is, a student Jedi who has left the Jedi Temple to forge her own path. In that sense, she is less Alec Guinness and Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, and more Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka Tano.
In truth, she is perhaps not like any Jedi we have met before. “This character doesn’t really fall into one category of any kind Star Wars character ... so that gave me a lot of freedom to decide how I wanted to move, without necessarily feeling like I had to ascribe to what a traditional Jedi might move like,” Stenberg says.
As The Acolyte is set in the era of the High Republic, there was a lot of Star Wars iconography that could not be used, says writer, director and producer Leslye Headland.Credit: Lucasfilm
“At the same time, Jedi have monk-like qualities, and they fight with lightsabers because Star Wars has always been influenced by Eastern film and culture ... so it didn’t feel like a huge leap to me to dig deeper into those references, but just have them manifest differently.”
For Headland, all of these story and character elements sit in a complex balancing act between selling the story to a hungry audience, and preserving as much of its best and most thrilling elements to be experienced in real time, and not sacrificed in the trailer at the altar of marketing.
“I don’t mean to say it’s one or the other, but I really do feel I’m pulled in two different directions,” Headland says. “Because on the one hand, there are definitely parts of the story, that if it were revealed ahead of time, would absolutely be heartbreaking for me. I really would not leave my house for several weeks if it happened.
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“So much was put into it, so much was put into this show, and there are certain aspects of it, that if it leaked, I would be inconsolable. That said, there are other aspects of the show that we’re keeping under wraps right now, that I don’t think, if it leaked, it would hurt your enjoyment of the show.
“I think you might not be surprised by things we’d love to surprise you with. And it is a little bit of a murder mystery or a mystery show ... so if clues end up on the internet, then you don’t get to experience them in real time.”
Star Wars: The Acolyte is on Disney+ from Wednesday, June 5.
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