begin quote from:
https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a40151808/who-is-tala-obi-wan-kenobi-indira-varma-star-wars/
Indira Varma On Her Obi-Wan Kenobi Character Reveal: “Tala Has A Lovely Arc”
The Game of Thrones actress breaks down her newest role: a red herring-turned-heroine.
Perhaps Obi-Wan Kenobi didn’t expect his knight in shining armor to wear the uniform of an Imperial officer. Then again, he didn’t anticipate getting dragged through fire by his robotized former BFF either, so how much does old Ben Kenobi really know? On Wednesday, Star Wars fans were treated to a number of reveals courtesy of the latest Obi-Wan Kenobi episode on Disney+, not the least of which was Hayden Christian’s return as Anakin Skywalker-turned-Darth Vader, voiced—delightfully—by James Earl Jones. But the series has made a point not to rely too heavily on the nostalgia pleasure button, opting when possible to push new characters to the forefront, in the hopes they might lure their own mighty fan bases. Exhibit A: the introduction of Indira Varma’s Tala Durith.
Fans who recognized Varma from her turn as Ellaria Sand in Game of Thrones—lover of Pedro Pascal’s Prince Oberyn Martell—were quick to spot her in the Obi-Wan trailer when it first dropped, this time dressed as an Imperial officer and architect of the nefarious Empire. But Star Wars loves a red herring. In episode 3, Tala appeared in her slick uniform only to shoot her accompanying Stormtroopers and lead Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) and young Princess Leia (Vivian Lyra Blair) to safety on the mining planet Mapuzo. The big reveal was what some fans had already deduced: She’s a defector, helping to maintain an underground railroad of sorts for runaway Jedi and their allies, known as The Path.
By the end of episode 3, Tala’s saved old Ben Kenobi’s life not once but twice—first from Stormtroopers and second from a vengeful Vader himself. But given the nasty burn along his right side, Obi-Wan’s unlikely to survive long without additional help from Tala, so we can expect her to become a major supporting character throughout the rest of the series—and if Varma’s willingness is any indication, perhaps into spin-offs as well.
Ahead of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s premiere night, Varma gave ELLE.com an exclusive inside look at what went into her character, how she’s handling her entrance to the Star Wars universe, and how she assembled the perfect premiere-night look to honor Tala’s introduction.
Who is Tala Durith?
During our Zoom interview, Varma grins and bites her lip. There’s only so much she can say about Tala without wading into spoiler territory, but she can tell us this: That Tala Durith would defend Obi-Wan Kenobi is, in the character’s book, a given. It doesn’t matter that she was once a genuine Imperial soldier, one who admits she “made mistakes” before defecting. “It's just a given that this is who she is and how she maneuvers and navigates her world,” Varma says. “And so she’s quite adept to it. [Her rescuing Obi-Wan] was quite offhand.”
As someone who openly admits she still hasn’t watched all the Star Wars films—“Ewan was taking the mickey out for me all the time, going, ‘You haven't bloody watched it, have you?’ He was a little bit appalled at my lack of knowledge,” Varma jokes—she believes she didn’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of starfighters or Clone War battle tactics to understand Tala’s motivations. “It’s not like I’m reprising a character that has been seen before,” she says. “So it’s not like I had to copy anyone or do anything like that.”
In fact, it’s the relative uniqueness of a character like Tala that finally made Varma feel welcome in the world of Star Wars. Now in her late 40s, Varma says a substantial part of why she didn’t watch the films as a child was because they didn’t seem made for her: “I'm slightly embarrassed because I feel like [not watching the films] could come across as an insult to the fandom and the legacy of Star Wars,” she says. “But it’s really not that. Because I feel like when I was a kid and Star Wars first came out, it felt like it was for the boys. And we were represented by Princess Leia. There wasn’t that much for someone like me in there.”
But when she watched her good friend Pascal in The Mandalorian, Varma was entranced by the wit, the humanity, and the serialized feel of what was otherwise part of a sweeping canon. That small-screen coziness translated to a conversation Varma eventually shared with Deborah Chow, who directed several episodes of The Mandalorian and would direct Obi-Wan Kenobi. Varma felt she could trust the director’s sensibilities, both to value emotion over action and to uplift female voices within the series. “When I spoke to Deborah, I sort of fell in love with her because she was very much like, I want [the show] to be character-driven,” Varma says. “I want your input. It’s about relationships and the emotional connections between people and their journeys. And to me, that’s what I love about acting. I’m not really interested in being in a massive action thing where you are a cog and you are sort of just a body doing amazing things.” She adds, “I feel like this is a really exciting time to sort of change the landscape of the way women are perceived. And it’s really exciting to have a female director leading this and trusting that it will be... We will be represented in the right way, because she’s on it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment