As the debut season of The Acolyte ends Collider catch up with Leslye Headland to talk Kyber bleeding, Darth Plageuis, the shows influences, season two (“if you enjoyed the show and you want to see more of the story, any support that you can give the show on social media platforms would be super helpful“) and much more besides.
COLLIDER: I really love how they do switch places, essentially. Where they are at the beginning and the end are completely inverted. How vital was it to get them into this inverted state, and does it sort of foretell where their arcs could potentially go in the future, as well?
HEADLAND: Absolutely. The challenge was, we’re gonna start with this former Jedi, and we’re gonna start with this aspiring Sith. They’re on opposite ends of the spectrum. We always knew that Mae was gonna end up with the Jedi — switch places — and Osha was gonna end up with the Sith. The difficult part was charting those story beats to get them there. What are the story beats to support these journeys? And I really feel like we achieved it. I really feel so compelled by the performances, especially Lee Jung-jae. He has to do it himself. Amandla [Stenberg] is kind of split and does it very, very subtly and emotionally charged, but how are we gonna get them there?
That’s also why I really felt that the memory-wipe was important, because I felt like Mae had to become completely docile, and then Osha had to embody this rage and despair. So, again, trying to get all of that to work took so much time and effort, and I cannot tell you how proud I am of our writers that they did that and that the actors were so game. Lee Jung-jae was like, “Got it.” He doesn’t speak English. The man does not speak English. He did it all phonetically, and he got it. People were like, “How did you direct somebody ESL?” And I said, “I didn’t.” That guy came in so prepared. He’s a movie star, and he just fucking did it, and I will be forever grateful to him for that.
It’s an extensive interview that’s very much worth a full read. We also had the chance to sit with Leslye on a roundtable last week after Choice landed, which you can hear below.
