‘I can tell you I am a boss’
Laura Dern excited by Star Wars role ... even before she knew that’s what it was
When Rian Johnson offered Laura Dern a role in his upcoming film, the filmmaker did not specify what the movie would be.
He asked the twice Oscar-nominated actress to lunch and told her about a strong and complex female character he was working on. He told her he wrote the role with her in mind.
While there had been rumours swirling around Hollywood that Johnson was going to be the next filmmaker to take on a Star Wars movie, he did not mention that exalted name to Dern until late in the meeting. In fact, at the time, production of Star Wars: The Last Jedi was still a few years off.
“He said ‘I’ve written something that I would love you to explore and I feel like you have a certain thing I need for this character,’” Dern said. She says she had already decided to do the role before Johnson lowered his voice to a whisper and said “… and it’s Star Wars.”
“I was like ‘Are you kidding me?’” she said. “It sounded like a complicated, interesting female and a challenge. I thought it was a beautiful introduction to Star Wars. I was saying yes just knowing about the character.”
Granted, Dern admits she would likely have taken a “you-say-StarWars-I-say-yes” attitude no matter what the character, having first watched the film as a 10-year-old and falling head-over-heels in love with it.
But the actress considers it a bonus, and a testament to the depth of Johnson’s vision, that it was the unique characteristics of the mysterious Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo that first got her attention rather than the brand name.
Given that her interview with Postmedia was a full week before Star Wars: The Last Jedi premièred for critics in Los Angeles, Dern was sworn to secrecy about plot points. Nor could she reveal much about her character, except that she is a leader in the Resistance against an increasingly powerful First Order and the dark side of the Force.
“I can tell you I am a boss and I can tell you that my hair is very purple,” she said. “Those things are all true. And that I feel proud and moved that I get to play a powerful female character in this legacy.”
Notwithstanding Dern’s involvement in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park, the actress is not generally associated with big movie franchises. Recently, some of her most interesting roles have come courtesy of this new golden age of television.
She stars in Big Little Lies, which nabbed her a Golden Globe nomination earlier this week. She was also in Twin Peaks: The Return this year, a project that may be one of the few that could match The Last Jedi in secrecy and wild speculation by devotees before it premièred. Beyond that, the second-generation actress — she’s the daughter of Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd — may be best known for such scrappy indie films as 1986’s Blue Velvet, 1990’s Wild at Heart and 1991’s Rambling Rose, which earned Dern her first Oscar nomination.
Dern says she has always seen depth in the universe George Lucas created in the 1970s.
“I saw them as acting, character films,” Dern says. “I didn’t see them as science-fiction spectacles. I remember when I saw Godfather II, I got that same feeling from the story of family and fathers and sons and brothers and how the light and the dark was in each character and you didn’t know which would win. It was amazing that George Lucas created this world, this genre, and the same questions were asked.”
If anything, the themes that course beneath the lasers, droids and starships in this universe have only become more relevant in the past couple of years in her home country.
“There’s the question of leadership and what that means and what that means in the world today,” Dern says.
“I think Rian is a subversive and brilliant filmmaker as he starts to question the same things we’re asking in the climate that exists and within ourselves.”