Dafne Keen (Madrid, 2005) watched the films of Star Wars with his father in English, but, when he did it with his friends, they put them in Spanish. “I perfectly remember Darth Vader’s voice.”, He tells us, remembering Constantino Romero. With a British father and Galician mother, he conquered us at the age of 12, devouring Pringles with Hugh Jackman in logan (2017) and starred dark matter (2019).
Seven years later, the actress, who grew up admiring Padmé, Han Solo and Luke, has the Force on her side in The Acolyte, the new series of the galactic universe created and directed by Leslye Headland (Russian doll), that is released June 5 on Disney+. This thriller takes us to the High Republic to follow a former Padawan (Amandla Stenberg) who investigates a series of crimes.
You were born in 2005, when it was released Revenge of the Sith. How did you get into the saga?
I came in because of my father, who made me watch the original trilogy when I was about seven years old. They had it in a video store below my house, in Cava Baja, and we rented it. I became an absolute superfan. Then I moved on to the prequels and found myself Revenge of the Sith secretly at my friend’s house, because my mother said she was too violent.
I’ve always been fascinated by movies that create entire universes and the Jedi are the coolest thing in the world. I dressed up as an invented Jedi when I was nine years old for carnival, I’m not hiding.
I imagine your excitement when they called you to The Acolyte.
It was a very cryptic casting and my agent told me: “I’ve been told not to tell you, but I think it’s “Star Wars.” They gave me an indecipherable scene where I was shouting a bunch of numbers and coordinates because I was supposed to be driving a ship. I tried it with my friend Teo at his mother’s place and, since it was numbers and there was no type of emotional logic, I simply studied it a lot, took the test and sent it.
One day, I was entering the Ideal cinemas and they called me from an American number. They told me Leslye wanted to talk to me. When she contacted me on Zoom, it was May or June and I was going by bus to the Sierra to a friend’s pool. Since I’m a mess, she had forgotten about the call [ríe]. I started receiving messages: “The director is on Zoom, where are you?” She was on a bus in Navalagamella.
I got off at a random stop, went into a gas station cafeteria and rested my phone on a can of Fanta that I had bought so I could sit down. When the director asked me where she was, I thought about lying to her, but I confessed the truth and she laughed a lot. She told me: “You have the role, I love that you didn’t lie to me.” He didn’t tell me anything about the character, just that it was a series of Star Wars and mixed Frozen and Kill Bill. I responded: “I can be a tree if you want, I don’t care.”
Now that we know you play Jecki Lon, what can you tell us about her? Have you mastered the lightsaber?
I can tell you that she is a very perfectionist and organized half-alien Padawan. The first two weeks, I didn’t know she was an alien. Suddenly, they started putting out white spray, horns. As soon as I put on the makeup, I already knew how she walked, I knew how she talked, and she became a much more innocent character than I originally thought.
As for fighting, we trained for months with sabers. It was very fun, but I had two problems when filming: either I smiled and they reminded me, “Dafne, you’re not happy. Stop smiling”, or I made noises imitating the saber and they had to warn me. If you have been a fan of Star Wars Since I was little, you have played with a stick and done the “grum grum”, and it escaped me [ríe]. We also had classes to learn how to use the Force, it was surreal.
The Acolyte It is a markedly feminine bet.
That is essential. It’s a woman’s story, written and directed by a woman, and most of the cast are women. It was a very beautiful shoot, with a lot of brotherhood. In productions with a lot of women, men tend to try to be hypermasculine to compensate, but not here, we all get along very well.
Leslye is a force of nature, Amandla Stenberg is incredible and a very good friend of mine, she was super protective of me, and training fights with Carrie-Anne Moss, of Matrix… He pooped on me.
How have you dealt with the secrecy of Star Wars?
I remember that, on filming, they gave us iPads that had four passwords. If you downloaded the script, you had 24 hours to read it and it disappeared from the iPad, it was outrageous. Each day they gave you the text printed on a special color of paper so you couldn’t photocopy it.
And I’m the worst technology person in the world, I didn’t understand iPads. Every week she would explain to them: “I locked my iPad again. I have not entered the password correctly. “I can’t, I resign.” I was there for eight months and I didn’t understand iPads at any point.
Has Marvel prepared you for the fandom? warsie?
I have practice from the projects I have been on, but there is nothing like Star Wars. His fans are basically fans of the mind of George Lucas. Marvel is literature, dozens and dozens of years of comics, but this saga began with a film made with miniatures and backgrounds painted in the 70s. It makes me very happy to be a tiny part of this.
Now that Wolverine is coming to the MCU, is there a future for X-23?
I adore Laura, she is one of my favorite characters in the entire world. I miss it, I would love to do it again and I really want to see Deadpool and Wolverine.
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