Solo role was both ‘great and awful’ for Thandie
Thandie Newton says being the first “dark-skinned woman” in a leading role in a Star Wars film is both a “great and awful” feeling.
The 45-year-old actor who stars as Val Beckett (wife of Woody Harrelson’s character, Tobias, Han Solo’s mentor ) in Solo: A Star Wars Story, says it is high time that diversity and inclusion were introduced to entertainment industries in a bigger way. “I am the first dark-skinned woman in a lead role in the Star Wars legacy, which is both great, that it is finally a correction, and awful, that it’s taken this long,” Newton says. “Even Lupita Nyong’o’s character (Maz Kanata in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens) was CGI,” she adds.
Moving forward, the actor has two film scripts of her own in development and plans to direct both — one story is set in the US, and the other, in the UK. She describes both as “very personal human stories”. “I really want to get to the f**king core of why we do what we do. I certainly don’t think that I know, but I love stories that are really trying to find out,” she says.
Newton says both the films will feature female protagonists. “I am obsessed with the female experience. I don’t actually think I could write as a man. And that is everything we have in cinema; that is how our identities have been fed back to us – from a male perspective,” she says.
Solo, which will release later this month across the world, is directed by Ron Howard, and stars Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han Solo, a role immortalised by Harrison Ford. Donald Glover plays Lando Calrissian, and Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke and Paul Bettany also star in the film.