One of the biggest standouts from the marketing for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has been K-2SO, voiced by Firefly alum Alan Tudyk. The tall, intimidating Imperial-turned-Rebel security droid has a lot to live up to considering the tremendous popularity of past Star Wars characters like C-3PO, R2-D2 and BB-8, but has already become one of the upcoming film’s most intriguing characters.
In a new interview with THR, Tudyk talks a bit about playing the character, whether or not he felt any pressure to make his droid distinctive, and if we’ll see K-2SO again, despite the fact that Rogue One won’t have a sequel.
Tudyk didn’t just voice K-2SO, but was actually present during the filming and played the character via motion capture. He feels that this gave him an edge performance wise, and meant that he’d avoid becoming the next Jar Jar Binks:
“It’s motion capture. So, you will hear my voice, but I was there for the whole thing. It was a blast. It’s basically acting, but you’re wearing a silly costume and the actual costume comes later in post… You’re part of making the role and making the movie there on set as opposed to animation, which is very different. There’s one animated character that’s a good example of Star Wars animation gone bad and that’s Jar Jar Binks. He was 100 percent animated, and it didn’t go well.”
When asked about the challenges of making K-2SO stand out from the other already iconic droids of the franchise, Tudyk said that “it was written really distinctly,” and that his Imperial background helped shape how he’d stand apart from the protocol or astromech droids we’ve seen in the past:
“Luckily the history of droids in Star Wars movies is really rich in that they’re not just emotionless robots. [K-2SO is] very different from the others because he comes from the Empire. He’s a security droid, so he can be an intimidating force… Some call him an enforcer droid, which seems appropriate. And he’s a spy and a soldier.”
And what about appearing in future Star Wars installments? Tudyk says, “I’m doing my best,” and is hopeful it will happen, since “playing a droid gives you the possibility to pop up in other Star Wars films since they don’t age like the human characters… Sure, why not? All the worlds are intertwined. It’s exciting to me what they’re doing with these stand-alones. You can criss-cross those timelines at any point. They’re creating them. They’re giving these backstories to characters and filling in black spots like ours.”
If Rogue One is a success (which box office tracking suggests is a no-brainer) and K-2SO does indeed match the popularity of past droids, it’s possible that we could see him pop up in other media or future films. Perhaps there’s another tarp in a rebel base somewhere that’s covering him up a-la R2-D2 in The Force Awakens?
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set for release on December 15th in the UK and December 16th in the States, with a cast that includes Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Diego Luna (Milk), Ben Mendelsohn (The Dark Knight Rises), Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Alan Tudyk (Con Man), Riz Ahmed (Nightcrawler), Genevieve O’Reilly (Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith), Jimmy Smits (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones), James Earl Jones (Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope), Valene Kane (The Fall), Alistair Petrie (The Night Manager), Warwick Davis (Star Wars: Episode IV – Return of the Jedi) and Jonathan Aris (Sherlock).
Originally published December 1, 2016. Updated April 12, 2018.
