Speaking with StarWars.com, director Rick Famuyiwa discusses The Mandalorian, his career, the differences, challenges and opportunities of being a black director, folding in different perspectives into Star Wars storytelling and his love for the cinematic classics that shaped so many of us.
StarWars.com: When you think about your place and influence in the Star Wars galaxy, what effect do you hope that you’ve had so far?
Rick Famuyiwa: One of the great things about The Mandalorian in particular was there was this group of filmmakers that came together, and kind of brought together by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni and Kathy Kennedy. But each of the filmmakers were from different perspectives and had different point of views. And so I’ve always felt that what makes The Mandalorian resonate so much is, of course, we got a very cool lead character that lots of people love, but I think also it’s that there were stories being told from a perspective that, even though it was in the world of Star Wars, it was new. It was different. It felt like what I was saying and my point of view was different than what Dave Filoni’s or Taika Waititi’s point of view were, than Deb Chow, but that they were all part of the same storytelling. And it kind of opened up what storytelling in Star Wars could be. If you just bring in different perspectives, you find those little elements that make things new and really exciting.
So I think the future of Star Wars is continuing to sort of open up those doors and continue to tell these stories from a point of view, because that’s not what we’ve seen before. I want to continue to be a part of that storytelling, because I do think, as I was saying before, that the audience today and coming up and growing up with storytelling wants to see a different kind of thing. And I think Star Wars and other franchises have to speak to that, or they become like artifacts — museum pieces that we study — and they’re not living and breathing. You have to be where the people are. And the people right now are a global community that has perspectives that are varied, but at the same time, a kind of universal thing binding everything together. And honestly, that’s what the Force is. That’s what the galaxy of Star Wars has always been about, represented through different alien species and droids and disparate sort of lands that both look familiar and not. But all of it was sort of shaped by one universal thing.
