In a reflective interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Ron Howard looks back on the challenging experience and his involvement in Solo: A Star Wars Story, while expressing his admiration for Lord and Miller’s talents, and also the advice he’s given to his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard.
On Solo…
“I understood that this difference had created a schism to the point where they weren’t going to be able to go on working together, and that was really unfortunate because I like Phil and Chris, and I also really admire them,” Howard expressed to The Hollywood Reporter. “When I looked at the footage and read the script, which I liked, I felt like I understood what it was that the studio and Lucasfilm were looking for in finishing the movie and reshooting some of the movie, and in a few places, I thought of reconceiving a few scenes, which they were open to. I had some really comforting conversations with Phil and Chris, who let me know that they weren’t leaving because I was coming in.”
In the years since the production of the film, only a handful of various rumors about those creative differences have emerged, largely centering on Lord and Miller mining the comedic vein they had found success with in previous projects and that the studio wanted a more earnest endeavor.
Howard noted that an added bonus of working on Solo was the development of the upcoming Willow series, as he pointed out, “For me, it was an absolute exercise in professionalism and friendship, and it indirectly led to a season of Willow, which we’re doing now [with Solo co-writer] Jonathan Kasdan.”
And on his daughter…
Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World) grew up on set watching her father work. “He’s such a wonderful dad and a beautiful, devoted, hard-working, brilliant storyteller, and he doesn’t have a private persona and then a public persona. He’s just who he is,” says Bryce Dallas Howard. “He’s a quality human being, and [all his kids] feel that way. He’s been so inclusive with us with his work, but he also recognizes that not every one of us has the same level of interest in filming as he does, and he’s been just as interested in what we’re into.”
While she has been an extra in his earlier movies, Howard says he has never directed his daughter. “But every director loves working with her, so I think I might be robbing myself,” he says. “Also, she’s turned down a couple of things I’ve tried to offer her — she’s a busy lady.”
His words of wisdom to her when she showed interest in directing, he says, differed from advice he’d give other aspiring filmmakers: “My advice was about understanding her ambitions and helping her calibrate that and apply her foothold in front of the camera to what she was trying to accomplish behind the camera. She’s incredibly sophisticated in her understanding of what’s going on, fueled by this energy, and she and I are alike in this way, of loving what the medium can mean to people and what it feels like to be a part of the team that tells the story. She has no intention to give up.” And neither does he.
