Katee Sackhoff talks to Kristin Baver at StarWars.com about the evolution of Bo-Katan Kryze, from voicing the character in animation to playing her in live-action on The Mandalorian.
Katee Sackhoff has played Bo-Katan Kryze for over a decade, starting as the voice of the redheaded Mandalorian on Star Wars: The Clones Wars, but she’s still getting used to inhabiting the role in live action on The Mandalorian.
As Season 3 of the hit Disney+ series continues with new episodes each Wednesday, Bo-Katan has emerged as a formidable co-star to Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin, the eponymous Mandalorian, and the fan-favorite Grogu. In the season premiere, we found the one-time heir to the throne of Mandalore now sitting idly by on her throne on Kalevala. Well, maybe not entirely idle. “Like a baller?” Sackhoff offers helpfully. The unique posture was the result of Sackhoff and show creator Jon Favreau working to define the character’s current state of being. “That was a really big thing for Jon and I,” Sackhoff tells StarWars.com. “He kept having me sit, and then walk back, and sit, and walk back. He wanted it to seem…slightly disrespectful,” she adds, pausing to laugh mid-thought. “It’s not the way that you would normally see royalty sit on a throne. I think that may be a sort of metaphor for part of her issues.”
Sackhoff speaks about Bo-Katan as one might an old friend (she’s previously told StarWars.com about dreaming as her animated counterpart). Still, it’s taken some adjusting to accept her own face staring back at her in the full armor of Lady Kryze, Sackhoff says. “You know, it’s a completely different medium and I don’t think I realized how different it was, to be honest, until I actually stepped on stage. I thought that I had done all of the work and realized that I didn’t actually know how Bo-Katan moved and talked and held herself. All of a sudden, I felt completely unprepared even though I knew so much about her and her backstory.”
In Season 2 of The Mandalorian, Bo-Katan’s first appearance in live action felt to Sackhoff like creators were paying homage to the animated Kryze. “I don’t think anybody really anticipated that she would be back to this extent. And if they did, they didn’t tell me!” she continues. “For this season, I wanted to lean in and own pieces of her more. We worked on the hair and her freckles might be a little bit more pronounced. I wanted her to look slightly different, not so much just cut out of animation, but that she looks like she belongs in this world.”
Doubles to match
Having stunt doubles in the series is a departure from when Sackhoff first entered showbusiness, ultimately winning her physically-demanding breakout role as Kara “Starbuck” Thrace on Battlestar Galactica. “When I started in this industry, it was really hard to find doubles to match me,” Sackhoff says. “You know, I was always just slightly bigger than most of the women around that were actors at the time and the stunt doubles, they just couldn’t find anyone. I was doubled by a man at one point.” The disparity pushed Sackhoff to perform more of her own stunt work. “It was literally me doing my own stunts because the match was not perfect, and I wanted it to look believable.”
As the industry has evolved and Sackhoff has gotten older, things have changed. “I’ve realized that, number one, I don’t bounce back as well as I used to,” Sackhoff says. “But also, I think that if I take my ego out of it and, and acknowledge that we are trying to create the best character and the most realistic, amazing, crazy-tough woman in the world, in this character… I can’t do all of that and that would be egotistical to think that I can. So, there were a few different women in this suit this year, and every one of them served a phenomenal purpose to make Bo as fierce as possible.” However, there’s one move that Sackhoff perfected. “I have a wicked knee slide! Every once in a while, when I can do a knee slide, I definitely do a knee slide.”
Read the interview in full at the link below, and watch part of the interview on This Week in Star Wars.
