Lucasfilm born and raised, it’s no surprise that 2025 sees Bryce Dallas Howard entrenched in the galaxy far, far away, and talking with Lucasfilm she discusses a long association that started with her Dad Ron Howard and continues through The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and now Skeleton Crew.
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“I have a lot of memories from that time that certainly influenced me,” she adds. “Getting to be around all of that, getting to see George [Lucas] do his thing, it was very, very defining for me. [Filmmaking is] truly about being curious about another person’s instincts, creativity, imagination, and what they bring to the table and having that be something that is a very kind of communal experience.”
That early exposure to collaborative filmmaking helped lead Howard on the path to her own career in acting and directing. The star of The Village (2004) and the recent Jurassic World series has also spent time behind the camera, directing features including the documentary DADS (2019) and the forthcoming film All for Her, as well as episodes of The Mandalorian beginning in 2019, and most recently episode 6 of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. “I feel so lucky to get to work in the Star Wars television franchise world,” Howard says. “It’s extraordinarily exciting. What George Lucas created was an incredible myth that has been contained within so many genres, and he really leaned into genre as a device in order to enhance the storytelling,” Howard continues. “And so because of that, every single season we’ve kind of played with different genres, and I got to experience different flavors of storytelling. I’ve never known what to expect, and that’s part of the fun, honestly, opening that script up and being like, ‘Oh, now it’s a heist. Now it’s a love story. Now it’s an epic drama!’”
Throughout her time directing in the galaxy, Howard has found herself invested in the characters — often wanting to spend a lot of time in the characters’ heads to determine the emotional landscape of each one. “I get hooked into it,” she says. “And it’s important to me.”
