I like comedies, and my brain sort of spins in that direction. So I'm really happy to say there were several smartass comments that come from me [on Star Wars].
Reading is a heady thing. You can be into the action of someone's thoughts and take a whole trip down someone's ruminations while seconds tick by in the world that they're in, but you can't really do that in film. Some films can, but not too much.
Gareth [Edwards] was very much about including everyone in what we were making, so he would cut together different scenes to show us what we were making. And the crew, cast, everyone would go into a theater there at Pinewood Studios and watch 10 minutes of what we were making. It was always so exciting. It looked amazing, and the music was huge.
This is reverent. This is Star Wars, damn it. You don't screw around with it. The things that were improv'd or added that developed on set weren't huge departures as far as storyline or anything like that goes. They just were clarifications in character or, at the best moments, they spoke to the moment in the story in a way that, at least with Kaytoo, tended to be funny.
I'm there [on Moana] with the other actors, so you play off one another. It's not just your idea of what the character is and what the world is like it would be in an animated [film], where it all sort of exists in your head. It's all right there, and if Diego's performance is doing what it's doing, it affects yours.
[Clowns] gotten a really bad rap in the last few years. People have really given into their own fears and have celebrated their fears in that way. American Horror Story didn't help.
I have a very close friend who is a brilliant clown, and I always wanted to do a show with him. So I did one year at La MaMa Theatre. I had not done stilts before that show, and I had about two weeks to learn how to do that, and they were just made with off-off Broadway money. The ones that I had in Rogue One were made by [Industrial Light & Magic]. So they were really easy. They were made with actual prosthetic feet on the bottom. They were athletic, in a way. I could run in them. There was a bounce to them that I could use.
[Making Moana] was like camping because we were all living together on the boat, and one night we came home and there was a whale shark. I got to go swimming with her. It was a magic, magic, magical time.
I'm a geeky actor, in the way that I like the craft of acting. I trained as a stage actor and was given a lot of technical tools to play with. I like the craft of acting. It sounds geeky when I say it, but it's true.
Because I'm CGI, [John Swartz] gave me a role of an Imperial pilot in one scene, so I had a day where I was on camera dressed as a black suit and a little cap that they wear.
Kaytoo [from the Star Wars] is more even-keeled. And he's a badass. He comes from the Empire, and he's a security droid. Some people call him an enforcer droid. He has the ability to enforce things. That was what he was built for. He's tall. He has an intimidating frame.
You do a film and you have hopes for it, and you read it, and you see it one way in your head, and you shoot it, and it'll always change from what you started out. Sometimes it turns out better, sometimes it turns out; I don't know, but as movies go I've never experienced seeing and likening what I've read, and I liked what I read.