Speaking to EW, Rupert Friend discussed his character of the Grand Inquisitor, revealing a number of interesting nuggets including the fact that he purposefully didn’t watch any episodes of Star Wars: Rebels before filming.
EW: Let’s start broad and then dive in a little more specific, but what can you tell us about the Grand Inquisitor, especially for people that maybe aren’t familiar with his history from the animated series?
RF: Okay, so basically the Grand Inquisitor is the chief of the Inquisitors, and he reports directly to Darth Vader. He’s a pretty powerful member of the dark side. And some people who aren’t familiar with Star Wars may or may not know this, but he used to be a Jedi. He used to fight for the forces of good as a temple guard. And he also is one of the people who trained Jedi in fighting styles, so he knows all the things that they know about fighting, and that makes him a pretty fearsome opponent.
EW: Did you go back and watch any of Star Wars Rebels to sort of see your character in animated form or did you just want to kind of take it fresh with the live action?
RF: I really wanted to honor the character as I saw him, and so I almost deliberately did not see the animated interpretation. Myself and [director] Deb Chow and [writer] Dave Filoni and all of the guys really wanted to do something fresh that honored and was faithful to the spirit of the character without doing a kind of impression of anybody else’s interpretation.
EW: Is his Jedi background something he’s going to talk openly about using to hunt these Jedi down?
RF: All will be revealed in a couple of weeks, but I can say it really helped me to have as my backstory this sense of awesome power and knowledge where he’s effectively hunting the folks he once was. So he has all this insider information on them, and on the way that they might fight or evade capture, and that just brought an enormous kind of feeling of power beneath the performance.
EW: Talk a little bit about his techniques. This guy’s obviously very effective at what he does. How does he achieve his results?
RF: Obviously, he’s the master of the Force. But to me, it’s that economy of power that demonstrates a truly powerful figure. As in, he’s not running around like a headless chicken chasing after people left, right, and center. There are plenty of lower minions who can do that. He’s the one who’s trusting the Force, trusting his gut. And he honestly, like a kind of expert rat catcher, just really feels he can sniff out any Jedi hiding anywhere, anytime. So if I were a Jedi and I were being hunted by this guy, I’d be pretty afraid.
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