It’s well known that Rogue One went through an extensive retooling process on its way to a billion dollar box office haul and Star Wars immortality, but what isn’t so well know is what exactly was replaced or reworked. Chatting onstage to Steven Weintraub from Collider, Riz Ahmed (alongside his Relay co-star Lilly James) discussed the toughest shoot of their career, and for Ahmed it was a Bodhi Rook scene that didn’t make it into the film.
AHMED: I’m going to jump in and say we did a one-shot take on my first week of shooting Rogue One that we spent a whole week shooting. I was carrying, like, a 50-kilo backpack prop on my back, running through sand, dodging stormtroopers and booby traps, and it wasn’t in the final movie.
JAMES: It didn’t make it in?
AHMED: No, it didn’t. They changed the whole storyline. Maybe they changed the whole storyline because I was so bad in that shot, but they changed the whole storyline, and none of that whole bit of the film was even in the final film. We reshot this other stuff. That was pretty tough. I was like, “Why can’t you make the prop lighter?” But no, they take their props so seriously on Star Wars.
Ahmed is also about to star in Relay, a new thriller from director David Mackenzie as Ash, ‘a fixer who keeps whistleblowers safe from the corrupt corporations that want to silence them‘, and you can check out the trailer below.
Ahmed is also about to feature in Tom Cruise’s new film, his first after completing his Mission: Impossible series.
“I can’t really share anything about it, other than just to say that Tom [Cruise] and Alejandro [Iñárritu] and Sandra Hüller and John Goodman and the whole cast, Michael Stuhlbarg, are just incredible,” he says, breaking into a grin. “I just hugely enjoyed working with them. I’m really excited for that project to meet the world, I think it’s something quite special and definitely very different.”
Exciting times for the brave former Imperial pilot who gave us the name ‘Rogue One‘.
