STAR WARS CELEBRATION 2023
NEW SHOWS. NEW FILMS. AND SOME RETURNING HEROES. THIS YEAR’S STAR WARS CELEBRATION WAS FULL OF SURPRISES, AND EMPIRE HAD THE BEST ACCESS IN THE GALAXY
Portfolio photographed exclusively at Star Wars Celebration, ExCeL London, 7-8 April 2023. Set build: Simon Godfrey Design
THE TRAILBLAZERS
AHSOKA
AS A CREW OF ANIMATED LEGENDS MAKE THE MOVE TO LIVE-ACTION, TEAM AHSOKA TALK UP THEIR “FULL-THROTTLE” SHOW
IT’S A WHOLE LOT OF ACTION
From the first moment we encountered Ahsoka Tano in live-action, in The Mandalorian’s ‘Chapter 13: The Jedi’, she displayed her formidable dual-wielding lightsaber skills in a samurai-styled showdown. But according to Ahsoka herself, Rosario Dawson, we’ve only scratched the surface of what she’s capable of. “We get down to business in this show,” she says of Ahsoka, simply claiming “action” as the series’ predominant flavour. “In Mando, there’s been a lot of reveals about where Ahsoka is at in her life, what she was looking for, and her intention. But in our show, you start getting into it, you know? It’s not suggestion, it’s not just little Easter eggs, it’s not just these couple of lines from a brief dialogue with Luke. This is where we really get into the meat of it, and go full-throttle on the mission.”
For several members of the cast, that meant undertaking intensive lightsaber training — but not for Mary Elizabeth Winstead, donning green Twi’lek headgear as pilot Hera Syndulla, originally from animated series Star Wars Rebels. “A part of me was a bit jealous,” she says of missing out on the duelling. “And then I would see what pain they were all in.” Plus, she gets to steer Rebels’ legendary craft the Ghost. “I got to fly a spaceship, which was pretty exciting in and of itself.”
SABINE WREN GETS A LIGHTSABER
Another Rebels favourite moving into live-action is Sabine Wren, played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo. And while she’s a Mandalorian (a take-the-helmet-off kind, with armour she regularly customises with her own spray-painted flourishes), the extended Ahsoka footage showed something intriguing: Sabine swinging a lightsaber. “I’m just really glad that’s out there,” she says, sounding relieved. “It’s been really hard talking about my fight-training without talking about the fact that it’s ’saber-training, which is literally all I’ve been doing for so long.” The challenge was having to channel two different galactic cultures. “The
