Evangeline Lilly revealed over the weekend at Fan Expo Boston (courtesy of David Anthos on YouTube) that she reached out to Abram’s producing partner, probably Bryan Burk who produced Lost and The Force Awakens, asking to be in The Force Awakens as Leia. She went on to say that she’d “never requested anything ever before”.
Ant-Man and the Wasp star Evangeline Lilly reveals that she tried to get cast in a role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In the years between The Force Awakens’ announcement and the movie’s first table read, fans knew very little about what the story was going to be about. This shroud of secrecy extended to the characters as well, new and returning alike.
When Disney and Lucasfilm were in casting mode for The Force Awakens, there were no shortage of rumors about actors who had met for various roles that weren’t revealed at the time. It wasn’t until the table read in 2014, before production started, that it was confirmed a number of iconic Star Wars characters were returning, such as Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford), and Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), along with a slew of new characters. But long before that table read, and long before fans knew for sure which characters would be in the movie, Lilly tried to use her connection to J.J. Abrams to secure a role that, unknown to her or anyone else at the time, was not available.
Lilly was then informed that Fisher was in fact returning to reprise her role as Leia Organa, thus ending her campaign for the role. Still, things worked out pretty well for Lilly since she would go on to land the role of Hope van Dyne in 2015’s Ant-Man, which she reprised in this summer’s sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp.
As we know, she didn’t get the gig as Carrie Fisher came back to play the role of Princess Leia that she first created in A New Hope — but there was no harm in asking!
