Having watched the first three episodes of The Acolyte, it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Lee Jung-Jae playing the role of Master Sol, but if he hadn’t persisted and learned to speak English in a crash course that allowed him to grab the role with both hands then we would definitely be missing out. He explained the process with Radio Times.
“Learning English was definitely a huge challenge in preparing for this role. However, I had two incredible dialogue coaches that were helping me along the way, and we spent so much time together, and down to the small details they were really teaching me how to speak – and because they had such great personalities as well, we were always joking around and laughing on set, so it still remains a really great memory for me.”
Speaking with Collider he went into further detail on preparing for the role and finding who Master Sol really was by immersing himself into the saga and watching the performances of the Jedi masters who went before him.
“Before I go into a role, I really like to understand the role fully and then make a lot of those decisions beforehand. But, you know, the Star Wars universe is a completely other thing, and there was so much I had to learn about the universe, and within the world. The Acolyte happens in a timeline 100 years prior to any existing Star Wars franchise now, so even though Lucasfilm told Leslye Headland, ‘This is the first story. You can go do your thing, do whatever you want to do,’ I didn’t want to just go by instinct.
So what I did was, in prepping for my role, I watched all the episodes of Star Wars in the past, saw how all of these legendary actors acted as Jedi Masters and studied their motivations. Why are they acting this way? Why do they do what they do? And I really focused on the connectivity of the Jedi Masters and wanting Sol to be part of that group of people .”
“The uniqueness that I wanted to portray in Master Sol is that he’s extremely humanistic, so I think he’s kind of this connective tissue between the audience and the show that has this human element to it.”
