Dave Filoni Discusses Casting the Live-Action Grand Admiral Thrawn in AHSOKA and Teases Dash Rendar
The first trailer for Star Wars: Ahsoka dropped earlier today, and Star Wars fans have been flipping out over it! There are so many cool and exciting moments in the trailer, but one part that a lot of fans are talking about right now is the tease of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s big live-action debut!
We knew that he would be involved with the story, but seeing the ruthless villain actually teased in the trailer was awesome! I imagine that being in the room at Star Wars Celebration when this trailer premiered was electric, and there’s no doubt that fans went wild when Thrawn popped up. Yeah, it was only the back of his head, but still!
The series is set after the fall of the Empire, Ahsoka “follows the former Jedi knight Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) as she investigates an emerging threat to a vulnerable galaxy.”
Ahsoka and Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) are on the hunt for Grand Admiral Thrawn in hopes that it will lead them to find the lost Ezra Bridger, the young Jedi who disappeared with Thrawn many years ago. The series directly follows up on several threads from Star Wars Rebels.
Some fans are thinking that Thrawn could actually make his debut in one of the upcoming episodes of The Mandalorian, but we’ll have to wait and see. The Mandalorian and Ahsoka producer and director Dave Filoni recently spoke with CB and he talked about the process of casting the live-action version of Thrawn. He said:
"It's something I've done several times now, is have an animation character make the jump [to live-action]. All I can say is, I asked [Lucasfilm president] Kathy [Kennedy] about this, 'How do you know when you've found the right person for the part?' and she just looked at me and said, 'Dave, you just know.' And she's right. Every time I've leaned into that process and gone through a bunch of auditions, [and] there's always one person that stands out. What might be notable for people, is Jon and I don't do that together, we do it separately. We like to do that because we like to see if we come up with the same person. We have an amazing record of accuracy together, to be connected to the same person.
"What's really telling is these are characters, in a lot of cases, in animation that I created, so I know them really well, but then I also like to get Jon's point of view, because he's a person that's seen it but doesn't know it in detail, but he'll know what I think is important about the character. When we bring that together, I think we've got a really good target for, 'Yes, that's the person,' and away we go."
Producer and director Rick Famuyiwa went on to address the pressure of bringing these iconic characters from the animated shows to life in the live-action series. Ahsoka includes Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Chopper, Ezra (Eman Esfandi), Zeb (Steve Blum), and more. he said:
"The show has had its fair share of big surprises in the past. What's great now is that there's a great crew of people who've been telling stories in this world and, obviously, Dave Filoni pre-dates what I've been doing, what Jon's [Favreau] been doing, and so the fact that characters that have existed from the creations of Dave and his storytelling are starting to make their way into live-action, it just makes organic sense. And we've had Ahsoka as one of the first introductions that way, and certainly Dave is getting ready to prep that show and they're putting it together now, so, yes, I think there will be a lot of characters that have been in his brain and he's been putting out there in the world of animation that will make their way into the world of live-action."
With Thrawn being pulled from the Star Wars Legends stories, some fans have wondered in if other Legends characters could get pulled into these stories as well. A lot of fans would love to see the bounty hunter Dash Rendar from the video game Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, and when asked if the character could show up, Filoni teased:
"I would just say anything's possible. If I would have looked back over the years and said I would be doing live-action, I would have thought, 'I don't see that happening,' and yet, here I am, standing on that stage today and looking left and seeing Sharmeen [Obaid-Chinoy] and looking right and seeing James [Mangold], that's what's special to me, and it's a real thrill and it's a real responsibility that I take seriously. It's a great opportunity for myself and I hope to represent Star Wars and fans well."
The series will debut exclusively on Disney+ in August 2023. Filoni will also be directing a live-action Star Wars movie for Lucasfilm.