The Acolyte, coming to Disney+ in 2024, is the most inclusive and diverse live-action Star Wars project ever, and the show’s lead Amandla Stenberg has said “You see the progress that Star Wars is making across the board in all of the streaming series.”
It is the most inclusive and diverse live-action Star Warsproject ever. Not only is the show’s lead, Amandla Stenberg, a gay, non-binary, Black intersectional feminist, but they are joined in the cast by Queen & Slimstar Jodie Turner-Smith (who is also Black), South Korean Lee Jung-jae of Squid Game fame, The Good Place‘s Manny Jacinto (of Filipino-Chinese descent), the Spanish-born Dafne Keen (Logan), Chicago Fire‘s Charlie Barnett (who is Black and gay), and Rebecca Henderson of Russian Doll, who is gay and married to showrunner Leslye Headland.
It’s a progression that Acolyte star Stenberg called “really exciting” when they sat down with EW’s Dagobah Dispatch podcast to discuss their new show. “You see the progress that Star Wars is making across the board in all of the streaming series,” says Stenberg, who also notes the difficulties minority fans have traditionally felt when gravitating towards the genre.
“When it comes to the world of fantasy and sci-fi in general, it hasn’t felt like a safe space always for people of color,” Stenberg says. “And it’s been a world that I’ve always deeply loved and been invested in. So to be in any way, shape, or form a part of the wave that is ushering in inclusion and safety for Black nerds, it’s my dream come true.”
That diversity and inclusion was something that the rest of the cast couldn’t help but observe. Turner-Smith tells EW it was “definitely something I noticed and was really excited about, and was one of the reasons that I chose to step into the world,” while Keen notes that the actors were well aware of the variety of perspectives at play. “That was definitely a conversation we’ve had on set,” Keen says. “It’s really refreshing to walk onto a set as diverse as this one in every sense. We’ve all come from different corners of the world and it’s really great to get so many different people from different backgrounds to create this thing together.”
Read the interview in full with Stenberg and the rest of at The Acolyte cast at the link below.
Image: Kate Green/Lucasfilm Ltd.
