Ezra Bridger actor Eman Esfandi has admitted, in a panel at LA Comic Con this past weekend, that he purposefully avoided watching all of Star Wars Rebels ahead of his time filming the Disney+ Ahsoka series.
Esfandi explained, “[He] didn’t watch all of Rebels” because he “didn’t want to get too caught up in the younger version of Ezra:”
“I admittedly – which, if you would have found this out prior you might have taken my head off, but maybe now you don’t think that – I didn’t watch all of ‘Rebels’. I didn’t want to get too caught up in the younger version of Ezra. I felt very connected to an older version the way he was written.”
While the actor didn’t see all of the series, he watched some, namely core episodes where “[Ezra] had scenes very intimately with like Sabine and the Spectre Crew” and ones with “Ahsoka in particular:”
“And I watched the episodes where [Ezra] had scenes very intimately with like Sabine and the Spectre crew and Ahsoka in particular. And just to understand that dynamic. Obviously, the hologram message, and also my TikTok became flooded with the scene–rest in peace Kanan. So I was inundated with a lot of it.”
According to Esfandi, he was getting such good feedback during production that he felt comfortable fully catching up at a later point in time:
“But I didn’t watch it until after the show. Because Dave [Filoni], and everyone else who was directing me were so like, reaffirming. Like, ‘no, yeah, that’s Ezra. Oh, that’s also so Ezra. And we’d be backstage, that’s Ezra. I was like, okay, so then I think we’re good. Like, I’ll watch it later. So I didn’t actually do the immersion thing until all the way after shooting.”
Stream the first of Ahsoka on Disney+ now.
