'Rogue One' Cast and Crew Press Interviews

By: Dominic Jones

It was busy weekend for the cast of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as the big press junket for the film took place in San Fransisco over the past few days.  This has resulted in lots of new interviews with the cast and crew today.  This included a big press conference (which you can listen to over at Full of Sith) and video and print interviews with cast and crew.  Below are several of them.

Director Gareth Edward was interviewed by Collider,

Felicity Jones (Jyn Erso) was interviewed by Ellen Degeneres,

BlacktreeTV sat down with every member of the cast to talk about the film,

MadeinHollywoodtv also sat down with the cast,

Riz Ahmed (Bodhi Rook) was interviewed by Innerspace,

Ahmed also sat down with Bonnie Laufer Krebs,

Director Gareth Edwards spoke to IGN about the fall of the Jedi,

Diego Luna (Cassian Andor) spoke with People about getting the role,

Luna and Jones were both interviewed by Extra,

Jones also spoke with Nova FM about the secrecy surrounding the film,

She also spoke with Access Hollywood about the film,

IGN also published a print interview with Edwards, where he discussed the use of the word terrorist to describe the Rebel Alliance,

"I think probably what we tried to do with the film is muddy the water a lot more. In A New Hope it's very clear what's good and what's evil. But the reality is, most people you would consider evil, when you see things from their perspective, they're trying to do something good and they tend to see you as evil, too. Film and story is a chance to point that out. I don't think you get peace by destroying everyone you think is evil. You get peace by understanding each other. And so, we're trying to show that from all different perspectives. We have good people that end up doing bad things, we have bad people that do good things, but every character in this film has their own perspective on events.

People that you can easily write off and put in a box and say, like, you tend to want to pick people up and say, "Are you good? Are you evil? Which one are you?" And a lot people can have elements of both and we have a lot of characters in the film that do -- that don't fit in a box. I find that really exciting and interesting. It gets you thinking and it became, it felt like the Star Wars I loved but taken up to the next level where big kids like me and you, there's some meat on the bone."

You can read the entier interview with Edwards over at IGN.

Edwards also discusses the planet Jedha in an interview with /Film, saying,

"When we were storyboarding, we got real war photography, gave it to the storyboard artists and said, “Do the Star Wars version of this shot.” So they would delete everyone and re-draw it like it was in Jedha. There was a load of great stuff that came from that, like people looking through windows and rooftops while tanks are going by and they’re waiting to do an ambush. And the civilians, the fact that people are going about their daily lives…we had a child in that one sequence. It felt like, when we passed through Jedha, it was important that it’s not a clean-cut thing. [Forest Whitaker’s] Saw Gerrera, in our movie, represents the extreme end of the rebellion. He’s someone that’s gone so far to be good that he’s gone right to the edge of what’s acceptable to achieve good that he’s nearly become the enemy himself and nearly doing the things that he’s accusing his enemies of doing.

We wanted [Felicity Jones’] Jyn in the middle of this spectrum of difficult decisions. We have bad people doing good things, good people doing bad things. Which path are you going to choose? What are you going to do with your life? In the world we live in today, especially with the global media and the internet, we see a lot more perspectives. You get more opinions from other countries and you can see that the problems we have are not clear cut. If there’s a story, if there’s a moral at the heart of Star Wars, it’s that we have to come together and work together to something good. When you work on your own, when you write off a particular culture, you’re never going to stop anything. In good science fiction, that shouldn’t be the surface layer. It’s life lessons that kids should carry, but they’re attracted to Star Wars because of explosions and robots and spaceships. I don’t think we’re doing our job if, at the core of it, there’s not a good moral life lesson for kids. I grew up with Star Wars and I think I leaned on it a lot more than I’ve given it credit for [for learning to] believe in myself and not giving up and trusting my instincts.

There’s a lot of fun and humor in it as well! I got very serious there."

You can read the entire interview over at /Film.

Edwards also spoke with Ain't It Cool News about the early days of working on Rogue One, saying,

"The first six months were development. For anyone who doesn't know, that's the bit where there's only a handful of people. In theory you sort of write the screenplay, you design the world and cast the movie slightly. Then there's pre-production where you build the sets, find locations and continue to cast.

In development we were here for about six months, just in that office over there, actually. We'd come in every day and the day would be split into two. Fifty percent of what I was doing was with Gary (Whitta), who was the writer then, with Kiri (Hart) and the story group... sometimes with just me and Gary, sometimes just with the story group, and we'd chat through ideas of what we wanted it to be. We'd play around a lot. Sometimes you're led by strong visuals and sometimes you're led by purely ideas.

The other 50% of the time was with the concept artists, led by Doug Chiang and there was Erik Tiemens and Ryan Church. At the very start of this it was such an infinite canvas. It was “what have you always wanted to see? What as fans would we want to see?” and we started doing some images, things that would pop and make us go “Oh, that's so cool!”"

You can read the entire interview over at Ain't It Cool News.

/Film also spoke with Alan Tudyk about his role as K-2SO.  Tudyk spoke about playing the new droid, saying,

"I honestly think half of my lines were made up. At least. I’m so surprised they gave me so much freedom. I can’t believe it, especially in a series that is so revered. C-3PO are different in the way that C-3PO is a servant and K2 isn’t. He’s more of his own…you want to call him his own man or I want to call him his own man. His own droid! His own person. If he doesn’t like an order, unless it comes from [Diego Luna’s] Cassian, he won’t follow it. Cassian he’s very devoted to. K2 sort of feels, especially in the beginning, that this mission would be much better suited for Cassian and K2 only. He likes how it is. He likes how things are. He doesn’t need all this change."

You can read the entire interview over at /Film.

Birth.Movies.Death spoke with Mads Mikkelsen about his role as Galen Erso.  Mikkelsen said,

"It is surreal! Over there (he points behind me) you can hear Mr. Ben Mendelsohn talking about his first encounter with Darth Vader. That's completely crazy, y'know? But that fan hat has to come off pretty quickly. You have to dig down and get it done. We are in that environment as an actual thing. We cannot be looking at it. We have to throw it away. Then on your smoking breaks or whatever you have, you can step back and look at it and enjoy it, but while you're doing it, no."

You can read the entire interview over at Birth.Movies.Death.

Birth.Movies.Death also spoke with Riz Ahmed.  He spoke about what the most surreal moment of shooting the film was, saying,

"First day, day one, I turn up and cranes are carrying palm trees and planting them in the ground. Like, they built a desert island for real. Hundreds of Stormtroopers are running around, and half of them are on break with their helmets off having a cigarette or a cup of coffee, talking to each other. That's just weird. And thrilling! You become a bit of a fanboy in that moment and you think, "Oh, wow, I gotta stay in-character". 

But again, I realized: roll with those punches. If seeing a Stormtrooper gives you a little bit of an adrenaline spike, or reminds you of your childhood, roll with that. Don't try and shut it out."

You can read the entire interview over at Birth.Movies.Death.

There are bound to be ever more interviews with the cast and crew as we race towards the film's released in (less than) two weeks time.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits theaters on December 16th.

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