Empire Magazine spoke to Dafne Keen about her role as Jedi Padawan Jecki Lon in the new Star Wars original series The Acolyte, including getting her Padawan braid and donning that alien Theelin makeup.
EMPIRE: When does your journey with Star Wars begin? Were you a fan already?
DAFNE KEEN: I’m a big fan. My dad got me into it – when I was seven, he made me watch the original trilogy. Do you remember those video stores, where people used to rent movies? Like, DVDs? When those were still a thing, my dad made me watch the three of them. Obsessed is not even close. I then watched the later trilogy, the prequels. My mum didn’t let me watch the third one, so I secretly watched it at my friend’s house.
What is that moment, then, when you get a call and it’s not just Star Wars, but they want you to play a Jedi? A Jedi Padawan!
I absolutely lost my mind. I literally was skipping on the street. I was going to my friend’s house, and I obviously couldn’t say anything to my friend. I just spent all day smiling to myself. My friend was like, ‘What is wrong with your face? What’s happening, Dafne?’ I was like, ‘Nothing, I’m just happy!’ He was like, ‘No you’re not, you’re giddy.’ I’d literally gotten the call five minutes before going into his house. And I had to pretend. Then I got home and I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ Literally lost it. I was so excited.
You were Leslye’s first choice for playing Jecki. Why did she think you were the perfect fit for this character?
I don’t know! But I’m very grateful she thought that. I spoke to Leslye, and she’d seen me in some stuff, and she liked my acting. She was like, ‘Hey, she can do stunts, she’d get away with a ‘saber.’ And I did my best.
She’d seen you in Logan and was blown away. Your big jobs so far have been Logan, His Dark Materials and now Star Wars – that’s an incredible lineup!
Yeah, it’s a pretty cool lineup. It’s also crazy because I’ve barely done any jobs that haven’t had fan bases before me. It’s kind of stressful – I just did a horror film that’s completely original. I’m not used to doing things that people aren’t like, ‘I hope they don’t ruin it.’ Every job I’ve done, there’s so many Tweets before being like, ‘Yeah, let’s hope they do it well.’ But you’re right – it is pretty great. I hadn’t thought of it like that. All three universes are completely different. They could not be further from each other. I’m just really honoured that things that I’ve been a fan of – like, I was a massive Star Wars fan, I was a Marvel fan, once I read the books I was a massive Dark Materials fan – I’ve gotten to be a core part of… Jecki in Star Wars is sick. Laura in Logan is sick. And Lyra’s pretty cool herself. So I’m really happy that I’ve gotten to play really fun characters.
So what can you tell us about Jecki? What’s her part to play in all of this?
I can say, she’s a team player. She’s fun, she’s really cool. She’s got some sick fight scenes, so look forward to that. A lot of ‘sabers. She’s a very diligent, talented Padawan. You’ll just have to watch!
According to Leslye, even though Jecki’s the youngest Jedi on the show, she’s almost the most mature.
She’s a very wise character. She’s very intelligent. She’s mature beyond her years. There’s a really fun dynamic between Jecki and Charlie Barnett’s character Yord – he’s a great friend of mine, I adore him. Jecki’s much more competent than he is, the entire time. But he’s a Knight, because he’s older. So there’s this really interesting dynamic of him being a little bit useless, and her being like, ‘You need to step your game up.’ Which was really fun to play. She’s a very perceptive character – she’s got a very hard shell, she’s overachieving. She’s actually a really sweet character at heart, and I think there’s one character – that I can’t really say [who it is] – who brings that softness out of her. It was really lovely to play that.
You have the Padawan braid. Did you dive into what it means to be a Jedi Padawan? That comes up in various Star Wars stories.
Yeah. We had these things called Jedi meetings, where all of us Jedi would go into this room with Star Wars specialists. They’d be like, ‘Ask away.’ It was like school – we were taught the ages from which you’re a Youngling, then you’re a Padawan, then you’re a Knight, then you’re a Master, all of the levels to it. We had Force training with this woman called Alex, which would be one-on-one – you’d go in this room, and she’d teach you how to wield the Force. We had all the stunt training with the ‘sabers. And I was fortunate enough to play an alien, which means I got that much more out of the Star Wars experience – I had an hour and a half every morning with Jeremy and Rob, the makeup artists, of becoming something completely different to me. And something so Star Wars. I remember the camera test and I was like, ‘It looks like Star Wars!’ To me, it looks like the original three films. We were like, ‘This has George Lucas written all over it.’ Leslye was very clever about how much of an alien I am – because I’m not enough of an alien for you not to be able to sympathise with my face. It’s all a human face. But enough for it to be an alien.
Jecki’s design is very David Bowie. Was that just a visual reference? Was Bowie a way into the character?
For sure – ‘Starman’ was, like, my tune while we were filming. I had it in my trailer all the time. As soon as we put that makeup on, I went to Leslye and I was like, ‘This is David Bowie.’ And she was like, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ We had the running joke that it was like Jedi David Bowie. Jedi Bowie, like, duh! It’s almost funky ‘70s, ‘80s-looking, which is really cool. I was so excited by the braid – as a Star Wars fan, to get a Padawan braid is, like, the sickest thing ever. I was so excited when they put it in. ‘Oh my god, I have my own Padawan braid!’ It was really cool. There were a ton of Bowie songs on set, all the time.
Jecki is Master Sol’s Padawan. What’s their dynamic like? It seems like he sets a very high bar to reach for.
It was very easy to fall into that admiration dynamic, because JJ [Lee Jung-Jae] is such a commanding presence. He’s so stoic and quiet and Master-like already that we very naturally fell into me trying to be proper and perfect for him. We’d do scenes together, and I’d try to copy how he was standing. Jecki has such a huge admiration for him. She wants to be perfect for him. He’s such a wonderful actor. We already knew he was talented, because we’ve all seen him. But he was doing scenes in a language that’s not his own. He didn’t know English! He was learning the lines, and he was killing it. He was doing a better job than 90% of us on set, it was insane. He just embodied a Jedi Master, so there wasn’t that much work to do.
Read the interview in full here, and stream the first two episodes of The Acolyte on Disney+ from June 4th in the US and June 5th in Europe and the UK.
