Speaking with the Force Material podcast, designer Ivan Manzella gave some interesting information regarding the design of Palpatine’s puppet, Supreme Leader Snoke and an influence on his design that harkens back to the earliest days of the saga.
“I actually based him on Peter Cushing, because there were always Snoke theories that he was Grand Moff Tarkin, which I always found quite amusing. You can see there are elements there. The maquette, there’s elements of Peter Cushing, just the cheekbone and the profile and stuff, but he wasn’t meant to be Peter Cushing. He was my Hammer reference, kind of thing.”
Manzella touched upon the design tweaks between his initial appearance in The Force Awakens and his larger role in The Last Jedi.
“He was quite graphic in that first iteration, in Force Awakens. You don’t really see much, he’s a hologram, I guess. What they did to him there is they got rid of some of his … they made his face a bit more friendlier, he went more to a flesh color and some of his face was softened up a bit so it wasn’t so graphic. He originally had that hole in the side of his face taken out, it was really kind of nasty stuff going on. I quite liked the idea of him having a marble skin type, all the veining like you get in marble, and these piercing, blue eyes. But he kind of evolved and got a little bit softer, I think.”
