'The Acolyte' Director Leslye Headland Discusses The Show In A New Interview
Image Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Leslye Headland has always been one for elevating underrepresented voices in her works, with The Acolyte being one of the latest of her series to do just that. The Star Wars series was cancelled after its first season, after a lot of negativity online. In a new interview as part of TheWrap’s Office With A View, Headland talks about that reaction.
In being a Star Wars fan, she says she has been a part of the fandom community. And the parts of it that exist on YouTube who react to anything big the franchise brings out.
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“These guys I’ve known for years and years.” And so when The Acolyte released, and those videos started coming out, “You don’t have to tell me who’s talking about it or how bad it is online, I know exactly who they are. I supported them on Patreon.”
Image Source: StarWars.com
Headland also acknowledges the increasing growth of that type of content, and how “studios use it almost like a focus group. It made me start to think, rather than these fans are toxic, or this thing is being mean to me, it made me think more that the content being made about Star Wars will ultimately be more culturally impactful than actual Star Wars.”
That acknowledgement of that side of the fandom ended with, “That is a proper business model rather than a bunch of mean people. It’s a lot more financial than I think people realise, and as somebody that really has supported a lot of those channels financially and with my eyeballs, some of that stuff is probably the only content that a younger generation is seeing.”
Headland also acknowledges the risks of creating a series where everything is new, and the issues of that. “It was a part of the lore where you couldn’t use a Stormtrooper, you didn’t have the reference of the politics and war that Tony Gilroy has brilliantly exploited in such a genius was in Andor. But all that iconography and all those visual references are original trilogy references, and our references were the High Republic novels and the publishing initiative and then the prequels, specifically with the lightsabers.”
Image Source: StarWars.com
Regarding the cancellation, Headland says she “was not surprised by it. I was surprised at the swiftness of it and the publicness of it. I was surprised by how it was handled. But once I was getting particular phone calls about the reaction and the criticism and the viewership, I felt like ‘Okay, the writing’s on the wall for sure.’” It feels like she wanted things to be different, stating, “I feel like for a launch of a first season show that was trying different things, I think it could have been worth it to allow the audience it was meant for to find it. But that wasn’t up to me. So I fully respect the decision, even if I’m sad about it.”
There were ideas for the second season Headland and her showrunner had, continuing some of the character themes from the first season. With the cancellation of The Acolyte, she is looking to the future of her career, which includes “pivoting to features just for the moment, because I am curious what that experience is like versus trying to develop TV and streaming.” And though her first entry into the Star Wars universe wasn’t the most liked, she has “no regrets, and I’m absolutely obsessed with Star Wars. I still am, and I love my show, and I know that it was wonderful.”
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Source: TheWrap
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