Dafne Keen has spoken to EW.com to share some insight and intel on the character she portrays in Star Wars: The Acolyte, half-human, half-Theelin, Jedi Padawan Jecki Lon.
The Padawan to Lee Jung-jae’s Jedi Master Sol, Jecki Lon will find herself engaged with a mysterious new threat to the Jedi Order. And show creator Leslye Headland was insistent on getting Keen to play the part. “We have to get Dafne, period,” Headland previously told EW. “I just wanted to see X23 with a lightsaber in their hand. That has to happen.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So what can you tell us about Jecki Lon?
DAFNE KEEN: Well, I’m very excited that we know her name now, because it was secret for so long. And I’m very happy that I get to say that she’s an alien and that she’s a Padawan and that she’s a Jedi. She’s a mixed species — part Theelin, part human. She’s very cool and I have some very cool fights I do with the lightsaber. I really love her. She’s a great character and was really fun to play. I’m very excited that the trailer came out. I was buzzing for days.
Jecki is Sol’s Padawan, so what kind of Padawan is she and what is her relationship like with her master?
I’d say she is a very dedicated Padawan. She’s definitely in awe of him in a very kind of sweet way. She thinks the absolute world of him in a way that I think they have a very sweet relationship, but she’s much more aware of the authority difference than, for example, Obi-Wan and Anakin. She’s very much like, “No, he’s the master and I’m the Padawan and he’s perfect. And everything he says, I have to follow to the T.”
So what was the makeup process like playing a Theelin?
It was an hour and a half, two hours in the morning. So I’d usually get picked up at 3:30 AM, and then I’d go in, and the wonderful makeup artists Rob and Jeremy would just sit me in this chair and I’d get a bald cap on me that went from my eyebrows on my head up and would cover all my hair.
And then I had a piece of prosthetic that went over my eyebrows and my head to cover a bald surface, and then I’d get airbrushed white, and then I’d get freckles airbrushed on me, and I’d get horns stuck on me. And my wig and my hands had to be painted, my nails had to be painted — if any parts of my body were revealed, they had to be air brushed.
It was honestly really fun. I loved the whole process of it. It was really freeing not having my face. It was really nice to just show up at work and be in someone else’s face. It was really enjoyable and it completely changed my approach to the character once I was in the makeup and changed the way I moved and everything. And also having horns on you is actually a safety hazard, so I can’t hug people on set, which is quite weird.
[Laughs]So did the makeup just totally just change the way you carried yourself?
100 percent. It completely changed how I moved. It also completely changed the character. When I read the script, I had one idea of what I was going to do, and it completely changed it in a way that I think is much more interesting than what I thought.
I thought she was going to be really methodical and cold and calculated, and then as soon as I was in that makeup, she became much more still methodical and a perfectionist and high achiever, but with much more of an ingenuity and a curiosity and a true love for the craft that is being a Jedi. Which was really interesting because I am someone who moves their eyebrows a lot, and not having eyebrows completely changes the expression on your face. And not having eyebrows gave me a sort of sweeter appearance, which completely changed the character in a way.
Read the article in full at EW.com and stream The Acolyte on Disney+ from June 4th (USA) | June 5th (Europe).
