With its cancellation after a sustained amount of online vitriol that torpedoed the show before it ever managed to get a foothold in the broader fandom, any hopes for further adventures in the late-The High Republic era taking us towards the era of the prequels are almost certainly gone, and speaking with The Wrap about her Shoot To Midnight production company Leslye Headland gave her thoughts on how the cancellation of The Acolyte was relayed to her and more.
TW: There was a lot of unfair vitriol about “The Acolyte” online, and for it to be the first “Star Wars” show to be publicly canceled – Lucasfilm had never done that.
LH: Really the whole thing with “The Acolyte” was always a major risk. It was a new part of the timeline. It was all new characters. It was a part of the lore where you couldn’t use a Storm Trooper, you didn’t have the reference of the politics and war that Tony Gilroy has brilliantly exploited in such a genius way in “Andor.” But all that iconography and all those visual references are original trilogy references, and our references were the High Republic novels and the publishing initiative and then the prequels, specifically with the lightsabers.
I also think that any gripes creatively with the show are completely valid. That’s people’s reaction. It’s usually their reaction to their own reaction. But like I said the show was always a risk. It’s the old adage of the first one through the wall is the bloodiest. And this is very similar to coming back to your question about the company, it was just very much, “Let’s shoot for the sky.” Let’s just go for it. So I have no regrets, and I’m absolutely obsessed with “Star Wars.” I still am, and I love my show, and I know that it was wonderful. And honestly, the designers that worked on the show are more responsible for it — because of what “Star Wars” is, creating that world is honestly harder than creating the narrative and the dialogue and the characters, that stuff I’ve done. It’s more hiring the right people, and all of those people were brilliant.
TW: What was the experience for you to see the show not only get attacked but weaponized by certain parts of the media?
LH: I have thoughts about this, and I don’t want to go on a tangent, so I’ll stick to the personal rather than the professional. I was not online. However, I am a “Star Wars” fan, which means I have always been, since the launch of YouTube, part of the “Star Wars” recap/criticism/lionization fandom community. These guys I’ve known for years and years. So when I got the information from others about what the weather report was, there was this real concern from friends of mine or co-workers of mine that saddened me. I also was like, “I know who these guys are.” You don’t have to tell me who’s talking about it or how bad it is online, I know exactly who they are. I supported them on Patreon. There are some of them that I respect, and there are some of them that I think are absolutely snake oil salesmen, just opportunists. Then, of course, there are the fascists and racists. So it runs a gamut. It isn’t just one thing or the other. So I think that if you’re in part of the fandom, you understand the genre and the tone of particular channels and creators. So in some ways I wasn’t surprised, and then in other ways I was disappointed. I think you always do that when you create something, it’s just that “Star Wars” is on a massive level of visibility.
We had the great fortume to be on a roundtable with Leslye, who spoke pasionately and eloquently about The Acolyte and Star Wars in general, which you can listen to below.
