While she takes plenty of hits for the perceived failures of Star Wars, Kathleen Kennedy rarely gets the praise she deserves for marshalling the GFFA into the prolific and growing giant it is today, and speaking with Collider Tony Gilroy very clearly laid out just how important Kennedy was to the creative and fiscal process of bringing the show to the small screen, as well as a key casting suggestion.
“hijacking me into the show, seducing me into the show, keeping the process rolling to keep me involved in the show, getting this show started to roll, approving all the wacky stuff that we did, and encouraging all that.”
“Our process with her is that she sees every script, obviously. She sees everything that’s going to go out. We have everything on ATRIS, where everybody’s seeing everything. All major casting approvals is Sanne [Wohlenberg] and Nina [Gold]. Nina and I would come up with our candidate, the person that we wanted to go through. There are certain thresholds that we wouldn’t waste time on, but pretty much anything that had any significance at all, we would run by her. Anything that had real significance would be a real community conversation, very little disagreement about any of those things.”
“Ben Bratt. Totally Kathy. I was like, ‘What are we going to do?’ She was like, ‘Ben Bratt.’ I’m like, ‘Really? Wow. That’s fantastic.’ So, sometimes really big swings and really big suggestions. She’s our conduit to money, and so that has a lot of happiness and has a lot of friction. So at the same time that you’re working together, you’re having some very difficult conversations and moments about money. But there’s no crying in baseball. It’s a thing. It’s a job. Everybody’s under the stress.”
