He’s the brooding, intense dark spirit behind the sequel trilogy, which culminates later this month in The Rise of Skywalker and Adam Driver describes the process that created Kylo Ren.
Driver is fully himself even as the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, a role that found him delivering a monologue to Darth Vader’s melted helmet. J.J. Abrams, director of The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker, and a major Driver fan, says the actor’s between-scenes demeanor can “sometimes be off-putting . . . because he’s so in his own head that you don’t quite know how to talk to him. It’s all because he’s processing. It’s not just that he’s like, ‘Ah, I’m in a bad mood.’ He’s wrestling with the material.” As the story goes, while making the original Star Wars, Mark Hamill once fretted aloud that after Leia, Han, and Luke escaped the garbage compactor on the Death Star, their hair should have been wet and mussed in subsequent scenes. Harrison Ford smirked and told him, “This ain’t that kind of movie, kid.”
For Driver, every movie is that kind of movie.
