Empire Magazine’s December 2024 issue features an interview with the directors of the Skeleton Crew talking about their love of Star Wars, their experiences making the show, their favourite saga aliens, and much more.
EMPIRE: How did you pick your directing team?
Jon Watts: Ford and I sat down like, “Who are our favourite directors, who would be good at this?” We went out to all you guys, and you all said yes. No-one turned it down! “Hey, do you want to do Star Wars? Play around in the Volume? Do pre-vis? Meet some pirates, some puppets, hang out with Jude Law?” “Yeah, sounds great!”
David Lowery: Jon pitched it as, “Kids lost in the Star Wars universe. And there’s a bunch of pirates.” I was like, “Cool. I just finished a Peter Pan movie, I’m in the pirate world.” You were like, “There’s a robot named SM-33.” I said, “Oh, ‘Smee’, that’s very Peter Pan.” And then: “Jude Law is going to star.” I was like, “Oh! I think I just made this?” (Law played Lowery’s Captain Hook.) To do it again in Star Wars was a dream come true.
Bryce Dallas Howard: I’ve known these guys — and Ford — for literally over 20 years. Watts has a playbill from something that I directed in college! My first time encountering ‘Grammar Rodeo’ was with the [Lucasfilm] pre-vis team. I was working on [The Mandalorian] Season 3 at the time. I was like, “How is it?” And they’re like, “It’s so good.”
Jake Schreier: Jon and Ford were my roommates in college, so they probably were like, “I guess we know Jake. He can do one also.” In freshman year at NYU, you had to do a semester of sound work. Jon and Ford’s sound project was a pirate radio drama. They’ve been working at this for a very, very long time.
Lee Isaac Chung: Jon had talked to [Jon] Favreau about the work I did on Mando. On Mandalorian, everything’s so secretive. After I say, “I’d love to do it,” then [Favreau] reveals what we’re doing. But the first conversation with Jon [Watts], he was immediately showing me concept art — I felt like I was looking at stuff I wasn’t supposed to be seeing yet.
Watts: I was probably breaking some NDA. Minari [Chung’s 2020 drama] is so good, and shows such an ability to work with young actors. We were so happy to have you, because we’ve got four ten-year-olds leading our show. We wanted directors who would be able to show Star Wars from a new perspective, while bringing their own unique storytelling POV. [With Daniels], we all know each other because their longtime DP, Larkin Seiple, shot a lot of things with me and Jake. Everything Everywhere hadn’t come out yet when we got them — I was just a fan of Swiss Army Man, and their crazy commercials and music videos.
Read the full Skeleton Crew directors roundtable interview in the Mickey 17 issue, on sale Thursday, 24th October, 2024. Pre-order a copy online here.
Stream the first two episodes of Skeleton Crew on Disney+ from December 4th in the UK/Europe and December 3rd in North America.
