Hayden Christensen and Diego Luna have never met, but as Christensen puts it, they’ve occupied the “same galaxy” for years, with Luna flying from London to LA just for this conversation as part of Season 18 of Variety’s Actors on Actors.
Christensen rocketed from teenage obscurity in Canada when George Lucas cast him as Anakin Skywalker for 2002’s “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones” and 2005’s “Revenge of the Sith,” which chronicled the young Jedi’s transformation into the iconic villain Darth Vader. The Mexican-born Luna — who rose to prominence in Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 coming-of-age masterpiece “Y tu mamá también” — joined “Star Wars” for 2016’s “Rogue One,” a prequel about the band of rebel spies, led by Luna’s Cassian Andor, that steal the plans for the Death Star.
Both men thought their “Star Wars” journeys ended with those films — in Luna’s case, because his character dies — but it turns out they were merely frozen in carbonite. Christensen, 42, returned last year as both Anakin and Vader in the Disney+ limited series “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” with his former co-star Ewan McGregor as the titular Jedi master 10 years after the events of “Revenge of the Sith.” Luna, 43, headlines Disney+’s “Andor,” a “Rogue One” prequel series from executive producer Tony Gilroy that radically reframes “Star Wars” storytelling from the perspective of everyday people struggling under the yoke of the Empire. Season 2 is filming in London; Luna, who is also an executive producer, flew into Los Angeles just for this conversation.
DIEGO LUNA: I do have a show where I do this, but it’s in Spanish.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN: My Spanish isn’t so good.
LUNA: Oh shit. Then I’ll try with my broken English. I’m going to start with something that for me has been present since the day I started working on “Rogue One.” Suddenly, acting became as personal as reconnecting with my childhood. You were around 20?
CHRISTENSEN: When I first started with “Star Wars”? Yeah, I was 19.
LUNA: How did that feel back then? Were you still attached to this universe?
CHRISTENSEN: Yeah, big time. I loved “Star Wars,” and when the audition came around, it was exciting, but it felt just unattainable. I remember meeting George Lucas for the first time and that was thrilling. And then auditioning with Natalie Portman. It was a very long process, but the entire time, I never really thought that it would ever go my way, so I was just enjoying it. Then when I got the phone call to play the part, it was a life-changing thing.
LUNA: But you started acting before, no?
CHRISTENSEN: Yeah, I’d started when I was young. I developed my passion for it studying theater in elementary school. And then I went to a performing arts high school and focused on dramatic studies.
LUNA: That must have been a shock to go from theater to [“Star Wars”]. And back then, your films were the most technologically advanced.
CHRISTENSEN: But there was a similarity there, too, because we were filming in front of blue screens and green screens. It demands a lot of your imagination, and you don’t necessarily have all of the real stimuli there to react to. So it wasn’t such a leap for me. And I didn’t have the experience either, so it wasn’t like I was used to working a certain way. That was just what I knew.
LUNA: I had this rule of doing a play every two years after “Y tu mamá también.”
CHRISTENSEN: That was the first film that I remember seeing you in. Such a great film.
LUNA: I was 20. That’s why I was establishing those parallels. It’s like, for you at 20, “Star Wars” happened. For me, [“Rogue One”] connected me with something I didn’t know even existed or that I could be part of. Suddenly, my work had a chance to find audiences in countries that I didn’t speak the language of. All my first work, it happened all in Mexico. It was theater, films or TV that no one got to see.
CHRISTENSEN: I’d really love to hear about how you got into “Rogue One.” You were already a very established actor.
LUNA: It was the first time such secrecy happened around anything I was going to be part of. I was asked by my agent to meet someone for something that couldn’t be said on the phone. I went into a meeting in a restaurant that was completely empty. There was a guy sitting in the corner with a computer open, and this was Gareth [Edwards], the director. I sat down with him, and it was just us for four hours.
CHRISTENSEN: So you had no concept that it was “Star Wars” at all at this point?
LUNA: My agent said, “This might be ‘Star Wars.’” I guess she didn’t want me to get excited about anything. Gareth explained to me the whole film, and he said at the end, “I would really like you to play this role.” I said to him, “But I don’t see myself here. I love these films, but how do I fit here? No one has my accent. I’ve never thought this could be possible.” He basically said, “Since I saw ‘Y tu mamá también,’ I thought you could be great for a role like this. I want that kind of tone in the film. I want that realism, that feeling that it’s everyday life.” I never thought that a film like “Y tu mamá también” would get me the chance to be in the world of “Star Wars.”
CHRISTENSEN: That’s what I love about it. It’s a much darker and more grounded sort of take. I think it was very important for “Star Wars.” I love your performance. There’s so much subtlety to it and nuance to it, which you can’t always get in stories like these. How was that for you?
LUNA: Thank you. It was something that we reminded ourselves every day on “Rogue One.” And on “Andor,” we took even further, the idea of you have to forget this is “Star Wars.” Tony Gilroy was very specific, always. Every time you had to explain too long what you wanted to do, he would be like, “There’s no room for that. It has to be simple. It has to be easy. It has to be real.” It was a constant reminder every day. If it started to feel imposed or weird or from “a galaxy far, far away,” then we were doing the wrong thing.
CHRISTENSEN: I thought that my “Star Wars” days were behind me, and then I got a phone call inviting me to come back. I would imagine maybe you had a similar thing with when you finished “Rogue One.” Did you know were going to get to continue with it?
LUNA: It was a joke on set: “One day, we should tell how these people got here.” But we never took it seriously. We didn’t know if the film was going to be liked or if we were going to be the film no one went to see. We had to wait for the film to come out to understand that there was room for something like this.
CHRISTENSEN: It was one of my favorite “Star Wars” films.
LUNA: Oh, man!
CHRISTENSEN: And “Andor” is so successful, too. It’s a great origin story for the beginning of the rebellion and getting to see the arc of your character and how he starts off at this place where he doesn’t really want anything to do with any of this. He just wants to keep to himself. But his destiny is calling.
LUNA: I think it’s because you know what he’s capable of. So the interesting journey is how far can we start from that? How lost can he be? It’s a show about his flaws and that contradiction that makes us real. We’re not always the best version of ourselves. It was nice to find him in the worst version of Cassian possible.
When you decided to come back for the “Obi-Wan” series, what was behind that decision?
CHRISTENSEN: Just the nature of getting the invitation. “Star Wars” holds a very special place in my heart. I enjoyed getting to go back to being a fan again and just watching these stories like everyone else. But there was a part of me that missed it, too. So when I got the call, it was a very easy decision. And the fact that it was the “Obi-Wan” show with Ewan McGregor, who is a good friend of mine, and that I’d get to swing a lightsaber with him again, it was a thrilling invitation. The director, Deborah Chow, is so articulate about what “Star Wars” is. She understands these characters so well. So I just felt like I was in good hands with her, and I was excited to get to do more with the character.
LUNA: That’s so— I mean, it’s not just a character, man. It’s the character.
CHRISTENSEN: It’s a good character!
LUNA: If I have to think about the worst nightmares of my life, it really…
CHRISTENSEN: …involves Darth Vader? [Laughs]
LUNA: I remember waiting two, three months for my Darth Vader case when I was, like, eight, nine years old. You had to go to the toy store and say, “I want this” and order it. I used that until I was a teenager, until my friend said, “That’s not cool anymore. Can you just bring a backpack?”
CHRISTENSEN: Yeah, well, they’re good at the merchandising. The image of Darth Vader is very well known. I remember being a kid, before I had seen the films, having a connection to this character, just being very taken with the physical presence and the voice. I remember scaring my little sister just trying to imitate the Darth Vader voice, and it worked. So there’s something about the construct of that character that just is very effective.
LUNA: I think it’s more than just the look and the presence. It’s the story behind, the simplicity of that.
CHRISTENSEN: Yeah, for sure. George Lucas subverted our expectations and understanding of this character, when he went back to “Episode I” and introduced him as this very sweet young kid who just had a lot of promise and potential. He mapped out a very compelling character arc that was hopefully somewhat sympathetic. I think we understood what Anakin was going through, and why he was making some choices that perhaps weren’t the best, and the circumstances surrounding his life. So it was a very understandable fall to the dark side, but it humanized him and made him a real person and almost somewhat of a pathetic person in a lot of ways. And you feel for Darth Vader now in a different way, too. Because it’s this man trapped in this life that perhaps he didn’t really want.
LUNA: Yeah, I like that. I connect that with what Tony Gilroy did with “Andor,” this idea of having to tell a story backwards. We have an opportunity to make sure this character comes from a past that you would never imagine.
CHRISTENSEN: On “Andor,” you’re a producer as well. What’s that like?
LUNA: I would say a good 15, 20 years ago, I started to be very much aware of what was happening before and after [shooting] and very interested in being part of that. Sometimes acting, in a way, alienated you from the actual process of making film. Theater is the opposite. In theater, you were there from the first read until the moment where you’re packing the props and the costumes.
CHRISTENSEN: But as an actor you can get insulated in your character in a lot of ways.
LUNA: In film, yeah, and you arrive when most choices have been made. It’s nice to get involved from the beginning, from the moment where designs are just sketches, and your questions and comments can have an input.
CHRISTENSEN: How cool that you got to be a part of the process at such an early stage.
LUNA: So cool. This is 24 episodes. It’s going to be four-and-a-half years of our lives. So it’s the only way, because you have to own it. I took a flight last night to be here to talk to you, and I’ll take a flight right now to go back to work because I care about this show and because it feels mine. I want to defend what we do, and fight to make it better.
Read the interview in full here.
Image: Greg Swales for Variety
