Understanding Evil in Star Wars The Last Jedi in an Interview with Gwendoline Christie

Disney provided hotel and transportation to LA for the Star Wars The Last Jedi Press Junket.

I remember the first time I saw Gwendoline Christie for the first time. It was at the press junket for Star Wars The Force Awakens. I saw her walk by and was amazed by her presence and had to ask someone who she was. They told me her name, and I still wasn’t sure, so they said Captain Phasma, and I was like, ok but. Then they said, she’s in Game of Thrones and I was like, oh wow she is really tall. We didn’t get to interview her at that time, but we did get to interview her this time and now I’m completely smitten with her. I watched her as she went from room to room doing interviews and all day long she was in amazing spirits. She seemed to be the most joyous person at the press junket that entire day. She can fill a room with her exuberance. She certainly filled our interview room.

As I mentioned in my interview yesterday with Laura Dern, women kick butt in the next installment of Star Wars. There is an abundance of strong female characters and they aren’t all good guys and Captain Phasma isn’t a good guy. Gwendoline Christie talked a lot about how much she loved getting to explore her character more. We might even get to learn why Captain Phasma is the way she is.

“what I loved about it is that in the world that we live in, we are met with deluge of information all of the time, and the idea of having that moment- the sort of suspension of disbelief where you have the space and are forced to wonder who is this, and who are they, I was very attracted by that.”

She also said described her character as an enigma, a bit of a mystery.

“She turns up out of nowhere; she has this very confrontational, threatening presence, and that’s sort of compounded or emphasized by what she’s wearing…… by this suit of armor which is entirely practical.”

She went on to also say that we will see more of Phasma in this film and we will see,

“her resilience, her need to fulfill an overriding sense of revenge, and we see something that we don’t commonly see in female characters which is that we see this- and it manifests itself in different ways, this violence that comes from deep within her.”

I have to remark that Gwendoline Christie is so descriptive and eloquent. Her choices in words just paint a picture of her character that almost make me want to root for Captain Phasma when I go see the movie next week. Or maybe we’ll go see the movie this weekend, I mean it does come out December 15th an all.

However, I’m not sure I can completely root for someone that is going to try and kill Finn. That’s not cool!

And that brings me to her conversation about training. I’ve already mentioned that she was in Game of Thrones, so of course she’s had some combat training. Well, that and she was in the previous movie, The Force Awakens as well. So working hard isn’t new to her. Her work on Star Wars The Last Jedi brought her back with her original trainer and she loves how he pushes her to do more.

“You know, he’s the person that helped to give me the courage in the first place, to say you can do more than you ever thought, physically, and to do it with a great deal of humor, and charm, and humanity. And he’s a man always sort of without ego, as well. I mean, what an amazing, an amazing teacher, and to be reunited with him, and he’s also so brilliant about how he puts things together, and how they evolve about pushing you further, and in terms of your strength. “

I think the one thing we need to remember is that Captain Phasma is “a person, she’s a person” even if she has the “need to eradicate”, “to hurt”, “to be ultimate”, “to destroy”. She is a “woman with a destructive force when women are seen as mothers” and it’s that complexity that seems to make Gwendoline giddy. She laughed a lot during the interview and really seems to love the complexity of her character Phasma. She said, “that fascinated me, and I felt like the opportunities were limitless.”