Oscar Isaac has discussed The Last Jedi with GQ Style whilst promoting his new film Annihilation.
I assume acting in the Star Wars movies, where there is so much other stuff going on around you, is a little bit like that.
The truth is, in all movies, you’re just a piece of it. In everything you do, there are so many people that are making something. Obviously this is exponentially bigger, but you’re still serving somebody, you’re servicing some thing, and when you’re making it, it just goes back to trying to make a good character, or trying to make it honest, trying to make it believable, and knowing that sometimes you’re just there for scale: “Just stand closer to the spaceship so they see that we really built it.”
How do you tune out the spaceships and do believable work, then?
It’s challenging—you get very self-conscious because the things that you’re being asked to do are so strange and difficult to relate to. For instance—and this also speaks to Rian’s great eye for detail—I’m in a little cockpit that they’ve built, and they’ve got the close-up, and they say: “Okay, so you’re driving. Now I want you to look to your right and you see one of your resistance pilots blow up, and then you look to your left and you see another resistance pilot blow up, and then you look forward, and then I want you to make a calculation that we’re losing too many people, and then I want you to say, ‘Pull out,’ right? But don’t do it from fear. Do it from a place of assertiveness, but also I want to see how dramatic it is, right? And so…go.” With no words, right? And so it’s very difficult not to feel like, “Wait, what am I doing here?” And to synthesize it all to make it work. But it’s a fun challenge as well. And Rian was right there. It’s like: “Okay, that one felt like it was a little too afraid.” “Okay, well, that one felt too casual now, so…” And sometimes it gets even weirder when you’re in space. Space makes things weirder. [laughs]
So you’re committed to one more Star Wars film.
This is my understanding. I don’t really read what I sign. [laughs] But from what I’ve been told…
