With the conclusion of season two of The Bad Batch landing on Disney Plus this past Wednesday – and our group review coming to the site very soon – Keisha Castle-Hughes discusses her character Doctor Emerie and her place in this wider, post-Order 66 story.
Emerie didn’t appear until the latter half of the season, debuting in episode 11, “Metamorphosis.” She works under the ruthless Doctor Royce Hemlock, head of the Empire’s Advanced Science Division, who has a particular interest in cloning. Throughout, Castle-Hughes plays Emerie as stoic, if not emotionless; it’s a smart performance that leaves the audience wondering what her motivations might be. “The great thing that The Bad Batch does is, it doesn’t just give you outright who people are. Even if they work in certain sectors, in certain worlds, we are still not clear what people’s intentions are. It’s ever-changing and that’s what keeps the show so exciting,” Castle-Hughes says. “I think that was the thing with Emerie. For a long time, I was playing her not necessarily like a villain, but probably more on that side of the fence. Not that her intentions were bad, but that maybe she was quite apathetic about the world around her. I think we’ve seen that with a lot of characters over the season, as well — all of a sudden, they take these huge shifts and the stakes completely change.”
When it came time to record the fateful line, Castle-Hughes — no stranger to Star Wars, as she played Naboo Queen Apailana in Revenge of the Sith — tried several takes, playing with her delivery. In the end, both the act of reaching out to Omega and Castle-Hughes’ performance convey a sense of longing. “It was the first time that it was really tricky to find the right tone for Emerie,” Castle-Hughes says. “The big thing that I was trying to discover is like, what is Emery’s understanding of family? We had to come from a truthful place, and I think that it’s much more intellectual space that she understands that being sisters means something, but probably hasn’t had that emotional experience yet, and hasn’t really had the emotional experience of family.”
