Lee Jung-jae and Amandla Stenberg Talk Sol and Mae Fight Scene in ‘The Acolyte’, Leslye Headland Discusses Pip Droid
The Acolyte cast and showrunner Leslye Headland all got together to speak to Ali Plumb on BBC Radio 1 about their highly anticipated series premiering later today in a 12-minute interview. Lee Jung-jae and Amandla Stenberg talked at length about Sol and Mae’s first fight scene shown in the trailers, Leslye Headland talked about the new droid Pip and went into depth on her rules of thumb for creating fight scenes, while the rest of the cast shared some light-hearted stories from the set.
Lee Jung-jae spoke (via interpreter) and confirmed that the fight with Mae seen in the trailers is Sol’s first in the series, adding that he has many action scenes throughout the show.
“Master Sol has quite a lot of fight scenes within The Acolyte, however this is his first one within the show. [It] especially took a lot of practice, um probably the most practice, because it has no lightsaber. So from the most detailed hand movements, he needs to show he’s a Jedi Master, so I practiced every day with my stunt team to be able to pull off this scene.”
Amandla was also asked about her fight scene with Sol and spoke about her enthusiasm at getting to work with Lee Jung-jae.
“I mean that was just so much fun because JJ has this extensive history not just with acting in stunt work but directing stunt work too, so he had this great perspective even when we were in the rehearsal room.
“It’s like having a dance partner, and something I love so much about this show, and something that our stunt coordinator Chris Cowen worked really intimately with Leslye — our creator — on was that each point in the action tells some kind of narrative. Some narrative story or it has some kind of emotionality to it and so I really love that scene, because I think that there’s a lot that’s communicated between those two characters physically.”
Showrunner Leslye Headland was then asked about her process of constructing a fight scene for The Acolyte, expanding on Amandla’s point that every action scene needed to tell a story in some fashion.
“There were two main things. The first one was… in camera, and also making sure the camera movement felt very old school, meaning … there are only a couple of places where it doesn’t do this, but it should feel like it’s on a dolly [camera equipment used to create smooth horizontal movement]. It should feel like the move is a pan. It shouldn’t get too fancy in terms of the camera just being able to go anywhere.
“And then the other rule of thumb for me was the fight scenes should still be scenes. They should have beginnings, they should have middles, where the stakes get raised, or the dynamics change, and then the ending should up the stakes even higher than we were already watching.
“So I wrote out a lot of the fight scenes in the script but it was really up to Chris Cowen, our action choreographer, to make those come to life.”
Leslye also mentioned that filming with Carrie-Ann Moss was a career high for her. She talks at length about her delight at seeing the lightsabers and the creaturs on set — apparently the location where Mae and Master Indara fight is called the “noodle house”, incidentally — but seeing Pip for the first time was one of her real highlights. She described the new droid as the combination of a “swiss army knife and an iPhone”.
“Seeing Pip for the first time, seeing how he was going to be manipulated, inside [Amandla’s] little pocket.
“We talked about [Pip being a potential toy] a lot because uh, not in a mercenary way, although that is part of it, but just in terms of, there were so many parts of Star Wars that I did want to own and have in my hands, so Pip was always, I described him as … a swiss army knife and an iPhone, so put both of those two things together and Neil [Scanlon] was like “Sure, we can do that!””
Amandla has mentioned a few times in previous interviews that she’s been a Star Wars fan growing up, and she explained here that she has her brother-in-law and sister to thank for getting her into Star Wars. That was her answer when asked which family members were most excited to learn that she got the leading role in a Star Wars series.
“My brother-in-law and my sister. They’ve been together since they were 14 so … they’ve introduced me to anything nerd related that I love now — fantasy and sci-fi, video games and anime — and we watched Star Wars together when I was a kid. So definitely them.”
Lee Jung-jae also mentioned how cool it was for his parents seeing him in a Star Wars series, as they saw the original films when they came out in cinemas.
“Of course Star Wars has such a long history, so my parents of course watched the films when they first came out, so they were very surprised when their son would be part of the Star Wars universe.”
Rebecca Henderson, Charlie Barnett and Dafne Keen all shared some stories from their time on-set for The Acolyte — they all agreed Lee Jung-jae was the most skilled with a lightsaber of all the cast and Charlie had an interesting story about being uncomfortable in the flight harness used to simulate Force jumps — you can watch those in the video.
The Acolyte drops on Disney Plus today, Tuesday, June 4 at 6pm PT.
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
