In last week’s episode of The Mandalorian season two, titled ‘The Jedi’, fan favourite character Ahsoka Tano made her first live-action appearance – after only appearing in animated form on The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels – with Rosario Dawson taking on the role.
Now, in an interview with Vanity Fair, Dawson and Dave Filoni, the creator of both The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels as well as serving as the executive producer and director on The Mandalorian, discussed how fan-casting played a pivotal role in making this happen.
“Actually it first came from fans online. Someone tweeted me and fancast me. I retweeted back and I was like, ‘Absolutely, yes please” and ‘#AhsokaLives.’ And apparently that got the attention of someone who has been doing the Star Wars press for years. She forwarded it to Dave Filoni. That kind of started a whole thing. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, did I just get fancast in something?’ And then nothing happened,” Dawson said.
In the same interview, Filoni revealed that even though he wasn’t even yet working on The Mandalorian, he saw the tweet and kept the fan-casting in his back pocket until it was time for Ahsoka to make her live-action debut.
“That was the first time and I looked at Rosario and I thought, ‘Huh. Yeah, I think maybe she would make a good Ahsoka.’… I was still trying to figure out how to get off Tatooine myself at that point. But when I started working with Jon Favreau, I’d bring up the character and he’s like, ‘Well, who are you thinking of playing her?’ I said, ‘Well, Rosario Dawson’s top of my list,’ and he’s like, ‘I know her!’ So immediately that starts to fit really well.”
Dawson continued to reveal that she actually got the call to play Ahsoka before a single episode of The Mandalorian had even aired on the Disney+ streaming service.
“They were just about to drop the first one, and they had all of this art that had me as Ahsoka. They had already been preparing, knowing that they wanted to have her be a part of a story in the second season. They’d just been visualizing me in this role that whole time, and it was mind-boggling.”
SEE ALSO: Ahsoka Tano voice actress Ashley Eckstein reacts to the character’s live-action Star Wars debut
What did you make of Rosario Dawson’s performance as Ahsoka Tano? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter @flickeringmyth…
The Mandalorian season two sees the returning Pedro Pascal (Din Djarin), Gina Carano (Cara Dune), Carl Weathers (Greef Karga), Giancarlo Esposito (Moff Gideon) and Bill Burr (Mayfield) joined by the likes of Temuera Morrison (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones), Katee Sackhoff (Star Wars: The Clone Wars), Timothy Olyphant (Justified), Michael Biehn (The Terminator), Rosario Dawson (Daredevil) and WWE Superstar Sasha Banks.
