The Toronto Comicon was host to a couple of guests from a galaxy far, far away as Ahoksa stars Diana Lee Inosanto and Eman Esfandi held a panel where they discussed the series and their memories filming. The two play Morgan Elsbeth and Ezra Bridger, the former an original character who first appeared in a guest role in The Mandalorian and the latter from the animated series Star Wars Rebels who made his live-action debut with Esfandi taking on the role.
The pair first spoke about how they got their roles, which were a fairly unique way for them both. Inosanto revealed her casting came by chance after The Mandalorian creators and producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni researched actresses who were very capable in martial arts and discovered her. Inosanto has an extensive history as a stuntwoman and stunt coordinator through several films and television series, from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Spy, I, Frankenstein and more. She’s even the goddaughter of the late legendary martial artist and actor Bruce Lee! But it was her work as an actress, writer, producer and director of her own 2008 film The Sensei that caught their attention.
In playing Morgan Elsbeth, a Nightsister from the planet Dathomir and ex-Imperial Magistrate, Inosanto described how she saw the complicated nuances of the character and related her to those of Julius Caesar and Catherine The Great, along with the significance of being a member of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s circle.
“I felt like this character had similarities to Julius Caesar and then I’m looking at Catherine The Great who is a complicated character,” Inosanto explained. “I just thought there’s something here. Eventually when I found out I was going to be playing a Nightsister it started to evolve, especially when I got the role and I read in my script Rosario would say ‘Where’s Thrawn?’ I had a heads up and thought ‘Oh, this character runs in the same circle as Thrawn’ so I started reading up on the Timothy Zahn books and understanding there must be some common characteristics that I would have with the circle of people that were already around Thrawn.”
She also credited Filoni’s wife E. Anne Convery for providing her a lot of insight to Dathomir and the Nightsisters in the anthology The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark. “Dave’s wife, E. Anne Convery, was very important to me because she wrote a story called ‘Bug’ in a compilation of other short stories. It goes into Dathomirian culture, what happened during the massacre, and I guessed [Morgan] might’ve been around for this or heard about this and that really led to the development of understanding Dathomirian culture and who she might be, why she’s a survivor.”
As for Esfandi, his casting seemed less like chance and more like him manifesting his wish to life – or, put in Star Wars terms, the will of the Force. “I felt like I connected to Ezra in a really interesting way,” Esfandi said. He told the crowd long before Filoni was even casting Ezra for live-action, he let his managing team know it was a role he wanted when it would eventually open up, believing it was an inevitability after Rosario Dawson’s casting as Ahsoka in The Mandalorian.
“I sent a bunch of pictures to my manager and agent and was like ‘When they cast for this character, I’m going to play him so just use these photos.’ I had all these photos of me with short hair, long hair, younger, with a beard. They were like ‘Ok… intentions are great’. I hadn’t even booked anything with them, ever, as an actor and they were like ‘you’re going to be a Star Wars character? Where are you getting this information?’ How am I going to tell them a Force ghost gave me the information? That’s how I had a feeling about it and they emailed me with an anonymous audition and said they thought it might be the character. When I read the character description I was like ‘Oh, this is definitely Ezra.’ It felt very in tune. Within a couple days they gave me the role.”
For someone with Inosanto’s martial arts and stunts background, you’d expect her to be very physical in her role, but one of the aspects that makes Morgan a compelling character is how controlled she is during the majority of her scenes. She is very composed and makes every movement of hers deliberate. Even in her fight scenes Morgan chooses her moves carefully. Inosanto said this was an intentional choice on her part to add more character to Morgan, utilizing her own meditation rituals in the role” For me, I actually believe in meditation so I would meditate all the time before a scene to keep calm because trust me, my heart rate was going ‘Oh my gosh!'”
Esfandi, however, has not had as much stunt and fight experience, but he was looking forward to using a lightsaber on film. To that end, he felt a fair bit of pressure to shooting his first fight sequence with a lightsaber in Ahsoka‘s season finale.
“My favourite scene to shoot for me, the first one that always comes to mind is the first time I got to do my own fight choreography with my lightsaber,” Esfandi said. “I go through all the Night Troopers and no one from the crew had seen me do anything yet, not much of the cast either but mostly the crew, and everybody on the crew is a Star Wars superfan as you would imagine. They all knew Rebels and they all knew me, I’m walking around like the new kid, and they’re like ‘Oh here’s Ezra, let’s see.’ I had somebody come up to me and say ‘Hey man, you have big shoes to fill.’ That was the first day anyone was going to see me do my own fighting.”
Despite the pressure, the experience was quite an exciting and memorable one for him. “I got through the whole scene after a few workshop scenes, it’s a really cool scene, really well choreographed, and as I got through it all I was so locked in to going through the footage with the stunt coordinator that when they called cut and I’m walking, the crew erupted! It was the first time I got all the way through it and they were like ‘Yeah! Oh my god!’ and I’m watching the footage and thought it was crazy! It was a very special moment for me.”
As for their co-stars, they each had nothing but praise for Ahsoka‘s cast. Inosanto specifically mentioned how fighting against Dawson was a great experience. “Rosario’s an amazing athlete. If you saw her in Rent, she danced and dancers are great. Dancers can pick up martials arts incredibly well.” However, she gave a particular call out to Ray Stevenson, who sadly passed away last year just prior to Ahsoka‘s premiere. Stevenson portrayed Baylan Skoll, a former Jedi and seeming mercenary who served as Morgan’s main agent and enforcer. “I do want to say as an honourable mention Ray Stevenson shares a special place in my heart. He’s no longer with us. Every scene with him is so treasured in my heart.”
Esfandi has been a Star Wars fan all of his life, so it is no surprise Return of the Jedi is his favourite film and Rebels his favourite series of the franchise. Rebels actually contains one of his favourite, yet tragic, moments in the whole saga: “Kanan’s sacrifice. It’s just so emotional but so epitomizing of what it means to be a Jedi and the whole franchise. Kanan right here is the truest Jedi we can know. It tears my heart out.”
The first season of Ahsoka is available to stream on Disney+. A second season is in development with an unknown timeframe to film and premiere.
Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.
