Ridley reveals why she’s reprising her Star Wars role.
It has been several years since the debut of 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but Daisy Ridley is already set to make her return as Rey. A new live-action film starring Ridley was announced at last year’s Star Wars Celebration, which is helmed by Ms. Marvel director Sharmeed Obaid-Chinoy and expected to follow Rey training new Jedi years after the events of the Sequel Trilogy. In a recent interview with Esquire, Ridley expressed her excitement towards returning to the role, revealing that she is “coming in a bit more eyes wide open” to the new project.
“I suppose I feel more like I’m owning it,” Ridley revealed. “I suppose I owned it the first time. Basically, I’m an adult now. I certainly did not feel like an adult at the time. Obviously, personally, things have changed, and professionally, I’ve had lots of other experiences, and so I definitely feel like it’s a different thing this time… There’s just a lot of joy with me and these films. Honestly, if I wasn’t excited, I wouldn’t have done it. It feels like a great thing to be a part of.”
“It wasn’t a difficult decision,” Ridley said of returning. “I didn’t say yes right away, Kathy [Kennedy] was like, ‘Take as long as you need.’ …Why wouldn’t I [do it]? Yes, they have been divisive, but also they bring a lot of love and joy to a lot of people. It feels pretty amazing to be able to continue a character – like, can I even remember how to play her? It’s an interesting challenge as an actor to come back to something and try to figure out what’s changed for me and what’s changed for her.”
What Is Rey’s Star Wars Movie About?
Last year, it was revealed that Damon Lindelof and Britt-Gibson had both departed the project, with Peaky Blinders‘ Stephen Knight brought on to rewrite the script. Lindelof and Britt-Gibson’s version of the film would have reportedly been set sixty years after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and followed a much older version of Rey.
“I will just say, that for reasons that I can’t get into on this Sunday morning, on this day, the degree of difficulty is extremely, extremely, extremely high. If it can’t be great, it shouldn’t exist,” Lindelof recently admitted to /Film about his project. “That’s all I’ll say, because I have the same association with it as you do, which is, it’s the first movie I saw sitting in my dad’s lap, four years old, May of ’77. I think it’s possible that sometimes when you hold something in such high reverence and esteem, you start to get in the kitchen and you just go, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be cooking. Maybe I should just be eating.’ We’ll just leave it at that point.”
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