Star Wars: The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland previews the upcoming Disney+ series set in the galaxy’s High Republic era in conversation with Vanity Fair.
“She is a gigantic Star Wars fan,” says Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. “What’s wonderful about Leslye is she knows it all. I mean, she’s read a gazillion books inside the E.U. There are little bits and pieces that she’s drawing from that no one has explored yet in the onscreen storytelling.”
The High Republic era of Star Wars has not previously been depicted in TV or movies, but it has been extensively chronicled in Lucasfilm publishing—especially in a recent series of books and comics set during the peak of this prosperous age. The Darkest Minds and The Hate U Give star Amandla Stenberg is reportedly set to play the lead role, although no official casting announcement has been made.
It’s still too early for Headland to fully reveal what the title means—and maybe it has multiple points of significance. But she strongly hints that it points toward an adherent to the dark side of the Force. “Acolyte” is commonly used to refer to a follower, especially a deeply devoted one. A true believer. But its primary definition is someone who assists a religious leader in the performance of a ritual. In Star Wars lore, practitioners of the dark side always worked in pairs—a master, and an apprentice.
“In the prequels, Mace Windu says: ‘There’s no way that the Sith could have reemerged without us knowing about it.’ And Yoda says, ‘Hard to see, the dark side is,’” Headland points out. “He acknowledges that this is a part of the Force that has been dormant, or at least hidden from them, for so long. What I immediately wondered about this particular period was: Who ispracticing it?”
The Acolyte is still distant on the horizon, with no release date specified, but here’s what Headland had to say about her plans for it:
Vanity Fair: How do you explain the High Republic to a Star Wars fan who may not yet be familiar with the stories the books have been telling?
The way I would explain the High Republic, and specifically where my show takes place, is that I’m about 100 years before The Phantom Menace. So, a lot of those characters haven’t even been born yet. My question in watching The Phantom Menace was always like, “Well, how did things get to this point?” Do you know what I mean? How did we get to where a Sith lord can infiltrate the Senate and none of the Jedi pick up on it? What went wrong? What are the scenarios that led us to this moment? So that’s what I would say. That’s how I would describe it to my friends, especially my non-Star Wars friends.
One hundred years in our own world is a huge leap. There are unthinkable changes in the span of century. Is that true of the Star Wars world, too? Obviously there are starships, there are lightsabers, but is it a different era technologically in the High Republic?
Absolutely. I mean, I love the fact that George Lucas, when he originally made Episodes 4 through 6 [a.k.a. the original trilogy], you can see that he wants everything to feel like it has this particular type of decay. This is a lived-in sci-fi fantasy world, not a sleek, well-put-together aesthetic. He was really going for something that I think was a bit revolutionary at the time.
When he tasked himself with making the prequels, the way that he decided to address technology and all of those types of things was to make it a much sleeker, better-looking, almost more advanced time. That’s what’s kind of weird about Star Wars. The further you go back, the better things are. “A long time ago” actually becomes more futuristic. So while we are creating this type of world, we’re trying to carry George’s concept that the further you go back, the more exciting and new and sleek and interesting things look.
The way you’re describing it reminds me of the Roman era, a time where that empire was very powerful and fairly technologically advanced. Then that region of the world falls into a period of barbarism, and the Dark Ages follow. Is that similar to what you’re talking about here? Is the High Republic an era of education and advancement and glory, while the Star Wars movies and shows that we know best are from a time of collapse and decay?
Yes. We actually use the term the Renaissance, or the Age Of Enlightenment. There doesn’t necessarily need to be an uprising among people in the expanded regions or in the inner worlds, because everybody’s doing so well. For what I’m exploring, another good analogy might be post World War I in the United States, where we very much got into this isolationist concept of: we’re not helping anybody. We want to protect this particular vibe that we have going. [Laughs.] ‘Vibe’ is definitely not the word they use.
So the leaders of this galactic era would rather ignore conflict or suffering than resolve it?
The High Republic is so golden in so many ways. The Jedi uniforms are gold and white and it’s almost like they would never get dirty. They would never be out and about. The idea is that they could have these types of uniforms because that’s how little they’re getting into skirmishes. So of course my question is like, ‘Well, what else is going on?’ You can’t just end up with George’s Phantom Menace situation if everything is going well.
It has to be going well at the expense of what? What is not being attended to? What are we turning a blind eye to that could lead to the rise of somebody like Palpatine about a century later? Yes, it’s one bad guy, but it’s one bad guy that completely undermines the entire system of government. A lot of other things must have been going on beneath the surface.
And we know the Jedi completely miss this.
[They’re] constantly talking about balance. If the light side is proliferating everywhere, what’s going on with the dark side? How is it manifesting itself? What is it doing to survive? Because it very clearly does later on in the world.
I’ve heard you describe The Acolyte as a mystery. So is that the mystery, what’s below the surface of this glossy world?
Yes—are things what they seem to be? Are things as good as everybody’s saying they are? That’s the big question of any society that has these big booming periods. There is some form of counterculture or some form of underground, whether good or bad, you know what I mean?
What are some of your cinematic influences for the show?
Jon Favreau said that when you’re working in this world, you want to go back to what George was inspired by. There were Westerns and then of course, Akira Kurosawa samurai films, and the fact that he originally offered Obi-Wan Kenobi to Toshiro Mifune …
So I actually went more toward martial arts films, and storylines that are a little bit more personal and less global and galactic. Those warriors were on missions that were deeply personal, with people feeling wronged and having to make it right. Wuxia Films and martial arts films from King Hu and the Shaw Brothers, like Come Drink With Me and Touch Of Zen. They’re monks that are also martial arts heroes.
What can you share about how The Acolyte originated?
I was pitching with Kathy Kennedy and we were developing this with [Lucasfilm development execs] Michelle Rejwan, and Rayne Roberts, who was like my main gal on this project. She was the person that literally found me and shepherded this idea all the way up to the top. We were really getting into it, and what’s so exciting about those [influencing] stories is that you don’t always know exactly who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. You’re not quite sure whether you can trust the heroine in this case as a result of that.
Honestly, my pitch to Kathy was the first time that everybody in the room was a woman. I’ve done many of those types of pitches and I was like, ‘This is trippy that my big [intellectual property] meeting is all ladies.’ That was pretty cool.
Read the interview in full here.
