After speaking in code for over two years, Obi-Wan Kenobi head writer and executive producer Joby Harold is now relishing the opportunity to say one particular name: Leia.
In a recent conversation with THR, Harold also discussed the keys to writing “Little Leia,” as well as channeling Anakin through Vader.
So let’s not bury the lede. What goes through your mind when you write dialogue for Lord Vader and then hear James Earl Jones’ voice perform that dialogue?
(Laughs.) It’s pretty cool. When you’ve seen those movies as many times as I have, the way he speaks — and the way all of these characters speak — is just part of your brain. I hate to be reductive and say it’s like playing with Star Warsfigures again, but it genuinely feels like that. You get that much pleasure from it. In the rewriting of it, that process can be somewhat exhausting, but writing Vader scenes are an amazing thing to be able to do.
This was also a reunion for you and Hayden Christensen, right?
Yeah, that’s right. I worked with Hayden back in the day [on 2007’s Awake], and he’s amazing. He’s a really good guy. He’s a great actor, and his spirit is incredible. He generally just wants to do good work, and getting to see him on his first day in wardrobe was a magical feeling. It was [Obi-Wan’s] vision of him as Anakin in episode three, and the whole crew couldn’t believe it, either. I’ll never forget it.
So how much of the Vader/Obi-Wan fight did you put on the page?
With those sequences, you try to find a way for character to come through action. If it’s ever action for action’s sake, it shouldn’t be there. So on the page, the choices that are being made within the choreography from the character point of view are all there, and then that gets handed off to [stunt coordinator] Jojo [Eusebio] who develops the actual fight sequence with [director] Deb [Chow]. And then on the day, the actors hopefully bring all that to life, but the idea is that they have everything they need to push the characters.
What was key about that sequence and Vader at this point is really feeling the Anakin under it all, the range and the anger, and articulating that within the sequence. It was about finding ways to feel the rivalry that exists after everything they’ve gone through and what are the opportunities within the fight so that it’s not just slug, slug, slug. It was about finding a moment to understand the depth of the relationship between the two of them.
I have to admit that the fight reminded me a bit of Batman and Bane’s first fight in The Dark Knight Rises as Vader toyed with Obi-Wan in a similar fashion and commented on how weak he’d become during his downtime.
(Laughs.) I can’t say that was a direct comp, but I’ve gotten to write Batman on a page.
Is Leia’s brand of sass a pleasure to write as well?
It is fun to write, but a little goes a long way. So you try not to gild the lily with that. You try to make sure that it comes across as her being spirited and not just a grown-up writing for a kid. So it’s always a challenge, but we tried to thread that needle as gracefully as we could. She’s pretty sassy, and Carrie Fisher’s incarnation of the character does a very good job of showing that she’s no one to be trifled with. So giving that to a child actor — but at the same time allowing her to be a kid still — is the dance. But the fun of those scenes with Ewan is to try to make it a two-hander in a really interesting way so that you get a little bit of Paper Moon and Midnight Run. I love those movies so much, so those tiny little moments within this bigger thing is part of the fun of it.
Leia is the Grogu-type surprise of this series, and Vivien Lyra Blair is dazzling in the role. Was Leia already involved to this degree when you joined the series?
To this degree, I can’t remember. The notion of Leia on the board was always the most interesting way of getting Obi-Wan out of hiding. If you think about it, there’s nothing else that could bring him out. He’s not going to leave Luke for anybody except Leia. Why else would he abandon that post? The notion of him looking over Luke and not looking over Leia was always a question for everybody once you realize the importance of those two characters side by side. So we had that be a question we confronted head on. Bail [Jimmy Smits] says to Obi-Wan in the cave, “Why him and not her?” So she’s the only thing that I believe he would leave Luke for. There’s nothing else he would be called to do where he wouldn’t stay by Luke’s side. I’m so glad that we were able to keep it a surprise for as long as we were and that I no longer have to use her code name. It’s nice to be able to say Leia out loud. Leia.
When you came on board, a batch of scripts were already written, and Lucasfilm president Kathy Kennedy recently described them as “too bleak.” While there are still plenty of dark elements in these first three episodes, was adding some levity one of the tasks you were assigned at first?
I wasn’t given a mandate when I first came in. To the credit of the team around me, it was like, “Do you like this character? What would you do?” And my instinct was consistent with their aspirations for the show and the character, which was great because that ended up being true throughout. We were always like-minded. But certainly, the lightness of touch here and there is really important within Star Wars. You see that with Haja [Kumail Nanjiani]. You see that with Leia. You see that with the tonal balance. George [Lucas] has said that Star Wars is for kids, and it should be. I have three boys, and they should find themselves in the tone of that world.
But on the other hand, what intrigued me about the character was the weight of where he was at this time and the guilt he was carrying and how he was haunted, knowing that Ewan could really carry those scenes. So both sides were really interesting to me and how they could live together in a satisfying way. You could have the lightness and still carry the weight of the drama. That’s the balance of Star Wars. If you look at The Empire Strikes Back, the glory of that movie is that it has those two sides. It’s intensely dramatic, weighty and mythic, but it also has an amazing lightness attached. So that was the holy grail of tonal comparisons that I had in my mind.
Read the interview in full here.
