Riz Ahmed Talks About His New ROGUE ONE Character Bodhi Rook

If you aren't watching HBO's crime series The Night Of, you're missing out on an outstanding performance by Riz Ahmed. He first popped up on my radar playing Jake Gyllenhaal's sidekick in Nightcrawler, but Ahmed is now a full-fledged star in his own right, and he's about to get a big career boost thanks to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

In that film, he plays Bodhi Rook, a short-tempered hotshot pilot. We didn't know much about him, but thanks to a new interview with EW, Ahmed has revealed some more details about his character. Rook is a former shuttle pilot who flew for the Empire before eventually turning and fighting for the Rebels. But he still wears his Imperial patch on his flight jacket, and Ahmed explains why:

“I think it’s to remind you of where you’re coming from, remind you where your debts are. Do you know what I mean? For me personally, every day, looking at that, it reminds you of what you’ve done.”

Ahmed likens his character to a long distance truck driver, and explains the character's mindset at the start of the story:

“A character like Bodhi is not born into the life of a soldier. He’s a pilot working for the Empire, doing his job, getting on with it. But when you put ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, it can freak them out. It can inspire deep passions. So I’m gonna defend Bodhi...Everyone in this Star Wars movie has got quite a complex past. They have a lot of baggage and history to it. That’s part of what makes it an interesting, nuanced movie. It’s taking characters with interesting backgrounds, whether it’s warrior monks, or ex-assassins, or long-distance truck drivers, and you’re assembling this pack of misfits.”

He also explains that unlike Han Solo, who has a special relationship with his ship, Bodhi (and Rogue One in general) doesn't seem to have time for that sort of attachment:

“The feel of this film is quite rough and ready, and so is the mission and so are the characters, and so is the coming together of the characters. So the idea of people having special ships that they spit-shine and say, ‘Hey, this is my ship called the XYZ,’ that’s not of this world. This world is more about ‘Grab what you can, and let’s roll.’”

Let's hope things aren't too rough, since rumors of a somewhat troubled batch of reshoots and post-production have been plaguing the movie for months. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits theaters on December 16, 2016.

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