ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: - Hi, I’m the host of the Star Wars show, and lucky enough to be up here and joining this conversation with you guys. So without further ado we are going to get started here. We’re going to welcome out the cast and crew of Rogue One. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] All right, so we are currently being joined by Ms. Kathy Kennedy, Gareth Edwards, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, and John Knoll. Good morning. Hi guys. How are you guys?

KATHY KENNEDY: Good morning, good morning.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: So I think to kick things off, Gareth, I’m going to pick on you first, because you’re easy to pick on.

GARETH EDWARDS: No fair. Do the actors. They’re really good in front of the camera. I’m not used to this.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: So we’ve talked quite about how you’ve been a Star Wars fan pretty much your whole life, so the lead up to Rogue One has been a pretty long road. Now that people are seeing the movie and you’re getting feedback, how do you feel?

GARETH EDWARDS: It’s strange. This is a very strange period in making a film, this little moment here, because for about two and a half years you’re really busy making it and your head’s down and you can’t really think about anything else. And now we’ve finished the movie but we haven’t released it, I feel like we’re a little bit pregnant and you know, the due date is – we’re just ready to give birth and like share it with the world.

ALAN TUDYK: My water broke!

MALE SPEAKER: Bad Timing

GARETH EDWARDS: [laughing]

ALAN TUDYK: Sorry.

FEMALE SPEAKER: You’re just like right on the cusp of it.

GARETH EDWARDS: Yeah. It’s kind of frustrating in a weird way to not be able to just show you all the movie now ‘cause the cast got to see it for the first time two days ago and well, let them speak about it –

FEMALE SPEAKER: I was jazzed.

GARETH EDWARDS: - but it went down very well I think.

MALE SPEAKER: It’s fantastic.

MALE SPEAKER: Yeah.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: Well, I think we’ll open it up to the audience now. I’ve got some questions. Yeah?

PRESS: Hi, James from Brazil. My question’s for Kathleen Kennedy. You already gave an interview saying there won’t be a sequel for this story, Rogue Two. I’d like to know can we expect to see one of these characters –

KATHY KENNEDY: This is devastating to everybody. [LAUGHTER]

MALE SPEAKER: But we don’t know that yet. That’s a conversation we haven’t had.

PRESS: Okay.

KATHY KENNEDY: No, you know, when we came up with this idea to do the standalone movies, what’s liberating in many ways is the notion that we can come up with these stories inside the Star Wars universe that really have a beginning, middle and an end, and they stand truly on their own, and this does.

MALE SPEAKER: It’s still not finished.

PRESS: Can we expect to see one of these characters in other Star Wars movies?

KATHY KENNEDY: Doubtful. [LAUGHS] Lot of tears, lot of tears.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: Okay moving on.

MALE SPEAKER: No.

JOHN KNOLL: I think the sequel to Rogue One is – it’s Episode 4, we’ve already made it.

KATHY KENNEDY: That’s true, that’s true.

MALE SPEAKER: And we can’t [SOUNDS LIKE] begin that.
[LAUGHTER]

JOHN KNOLL: Not without some substantial rework.

MALE SPEAKER: No.

KATHY KENNEDY: Actually, John, you could probably figure that one.

JOHN KNOLL: I’ll get right on that. We’ll talk, we’ll talk later.

PRESS: Hello, this question is for Gareth, and Gareth I was wondering, what was the most interesting thing for you in relation to the fight between the Empire and the Rebels, because it seems that this version is like grittier, you’re trying to just like talk about like moral issues. I don’t know how was for you to just like try to add something more complex maybe to the mythology.

GARETH EDWARDS: Yeah, I mean, when we started this whole process it was one of the things Kathy would, you know, be asking the whole time is, okay, how is this going to be different, we need to differentiate ourselves from the saga. And so it was like, okay, when we start playing around and experimenting, one of the things we did was we took real war photography like photographs from Vietnam and World War II and the Gulf and stuff like this and we used this bit of software that John wrote for Photoshop and put in rebel helmets on the soldiers and rebel guns and some X-Wings in the background instead of fighter jets, and suddenly you looked at this stuff and it was really engaging, and everyone who came and looked around the building and we showed them things, they’d get to these images and go oh my god, wow, I really want to see that film, and the studio loved, everybody loved it, and they would say like, just go make that, and that’s kind of what we went off and did. But it was also like being in a war, like you know, the film crew became like the characters in a way. It’s sort of a cliché that the process of making the film becomes like the story you’re telling, and in this case we were all literally in the trenches together trying to achieve these impossible tasks, like the characters were trying to steal Death Star plans but as a group we’re trying to make a great Star Wars movie and so you feel like you’ve been through a battle together and there’s like – I mean, maybe I’m speaking for myself here but I feel like there’s this connection you have now – like no matter what happens, Diego, if I see you like in 20 years, we’re just going to have that, like we’ve been through a way together, right?

DIEGO LUNA: I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never felt that connection. I just to be reminded every day I was getting paid.

MALE SPEAKER: Yep.

PRESS: Hi, [PH] Louis Leco with [PH] Nuke the Frage and the [PH] Nerdreport. Thanks for having us here. Last year I had a chance to ask J.J. Abrams, what was the most important thing about the original trilogy that he brought into The Force Awakens, so now I’m going to ask the director, what was the most important thing from Lucas’s original trilogy that you are bringing into Rogue One? And by the way, the footage looks fantastic.

GARETH EDWARDS: Oh, thank you. Thanks. The problem with Star Wars is that question takes about four hours. There’s not an individual thing – as long as you do this, it’s Star Wars and you’re golden – it’s like you’ve got to do about a thousand different things and mix them all together and get the balance just right. It’s like a really tricky thing to emulate what we love about the original but feel like we’re telling a different story and it’s fresh. But for me, you know, there’s like, we could have done like a very, you know, specific genre film and stuck Star Wars on it and said that’s our movie. But George was always really good at mixing the genres together and creating this very emotional sort of mythological story that just happened to have robots and spaceships in it – no offense, Alan, but it’s really got some like, there’s meaning behind it, there’s like meat on the bone, and it took us a long time to try and crack that code and find all those different ingredients that we needed to have and go okay, now it works. And it’s not something that you just do in a week and you go, okay, let’s go make this; it’s like a two and a half year process.

PRESS: Diego, over here.

DIEGO LUNA: Hi.

PRESS: Hi. Could you just talk about, in finding this character, was it all on the script or did you go back and look at other Star Wars films to sort of figure out where your kind of character fits into the hierarchy or was it just all there for you, once you read the story?

[TECHNICAL]

DIEGO LUNA: It was a mixture of everything. At the beginning, yes, I started just with the script that was already interesting enough for me to kind of dig into myself and try to find this captain inside me and I guess the most important part was to do the military training, you know? You have to establish a parallel too, you know, with this galaxy far, far away and the world the live in, and it was very interesting to be – I spent two weeks with this ex-military in London, just taking about experiences and about the last 10 or 15 years of his life, and that gave me enough material. And then I mean, I love Star Wars and I love the films and A New Hope is probably the first film I really connected with, so I would go back to that film to find a connection again. But it was more about seeing war films, you know. Apocalypse Now, for example, stuff like that. Because my character needs that kind of military structure and it’s a guy that is willing to risk anything for this cause, you know? But he thinks in a hierarchical kind of a structure and he has to start there at least in this film, so yeah, that was the research I did.

PRESS: Hi guys, Lucas Siegel from Comicbook.com. Donnie, I have a question for you. I’m right up front here, Donnie. I have a question for you, Donnie. Obviously the force is very much derived from Eastern philosophy. How much of your study of martial arts helped you develop your relationship with the force as Chirrut Îmwe?

DONNIE YEN: Well, that’s a good question, but I never thought about relating to the martial arts. You know, I always think of the force – we all have the force, it’s just we don’t realize it. It’s kind of like – I think it’s interesting to see, to me, Star Wars story is about reminding us the things that we neglect and forget. And the force is – we always have [SOUNDS LIKE] kind of ability, and to answer your question, I don’t think of it as having the martial arts ability, it’s just being a human being – you do have the Force.

PRESS: Thank you.

PRESS: To your right, question for Gareth. [OVERLAPPING] It’s been revealed that George Lucas came to the set of this. What’s it like to have George on set, and has he seen any footage yet? Does he have plans to see?

[INDISCERNIBLE CONVERSATION]

GARETH EDWARDS: So two days ago, we got to show George the movie, and we all had a phone call and I got to speak with him yesterday, and I don’t want to put words into his mouth, but I can honestly say that I can die happy now. He really liked the movie, so it meant a lot. To be honest, and no offense to anyone here, it was the most important review to me, was what George thought of it. You know, you guys are important too, but come on, he’s kind of God when it comes to Star Wars. What’s that?

FEMALE SPEAKER: - the wildest phone call, though, I mean.

GARETH EDWARDS: Yeah it was. We’re in the middle of doing press and you know, you have one interview, another interview, and then suddenly they said, “We need to take a break.” And I was like, “I’m okay.” And it’s like, “No, we need to take a break.” And then they go, “We need to talk to you. We’re going to just go out of the room.” And it’s like what’s going on? Something’s bad happened? And we go into a room, they say, “George wants to speak to you.” And they made the call and I was like arghhh. And yeah, and I will take that conversation to my grave. It was a real privilege. And you know, his opinion means the world to me, and John and Kathy have spoke to him. So it’s yeah.

PRESS: So obviously one of the most exciting things about this film is seeing the diversity and representation from these main characters. How important was that in crafting the cast and characters of this film? And also you know, for future Star Wars movies what would you like to see from underrepresented groups in Star Wars future films?

[INDISCERNIBLE CONVERSATION]

KATHY KENNEDY: No, I think it’s incredibly important to Star Wars. I think it’s more important to the film industry in general. I think, you know, having cast that represent and reflect the world today and having characters that people can relate to all over the world, this is very much a global industry, films mean something to people all over the world, and it was certainly important to this story. It lent itself very, very well. These are a group of people who come together in ways that are kind of inexplicable, but they share a very common belief and they feel very strongly in their desire to do the right thing and they work together incredibly well, and having that sense of diversity as people come together was really important to our story. Every movie has reasons for why you cast certain people, but I think what we’re doing today is just being much more mindful of that, and I think it’s important.

PRESS: Hi, I’m Maggie Lyons from Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls back here. This is a question for Kathy, sort of a follow-up on the last question. In terms of women specifically in gender, what do you think the future of women in Star Wars could mean for women in media and the world at large and why is it important to you to foster that change?

KATHY KENNEDY: Well, first of all, I hope it has that level of impact. That would be great. You know, I think it is really important. You know, I found it really interesting when I first stepped into this job and I started to look at, you know, what does it mean to be a female hero, a female heroine? And when you started to look certainly online at imagery, it was pretty shocking what came up, and I think the character of Rey, the character of Jyn, I think these are empowered women that are not necessarily just taking on male characteristics, they’re genuinely female heroines. And I think that’s really important to the way we tell stories and so I do hope you’re right, I think it will make a difference.

PRESS: Toys are a big thing, part of Star Wars [INDISCERNIBLE].

KATHY KENNEDY: I was laughing at myself as these guys were all standing in the hall as we were waiting to come in here because they were all scrutinizing the toys that are lined up there.

FEMALE SPEAKER: You guys are Hot Wheels now.

KATHY KENNEDY: Yeah.

MALE SPEAKER: Hot Wheels, yeah, that’s the weirdest one. But you know, I always felt sorry for those musicians or those writers that for Christmas give their own record, you know, as a gift, but I think this Christmas I’m going to be giving a lot of those toys with my face, it’s so cool, and when I saw my kids playing with them, it was perfect, like it just made complete sense. My daughter, I gave her mine, and she was like, no, no, do you have Jyn’s? [OVERLAPPING] Jyn, and she loves Felicity. But it’s a cool feeling, and I don’t know, probably in 20, 30 years it’s going to be really cool to open that drawer and find your toy, you know. I like Alan’s because it doesn’t have his face, [LAUGHTER] and it doesn’t do the voice, so it’s like he cannot really say it’s his toy, even though he’s been saying it’s his toy.

ALAN TUDYK: It’s a selling point, for sure. Mine is a lot bigger than yours, I should say. Maybe that’s what that’s about. There’s one that’s like this tall and I have it sitting on my couch, just kind of chillin’, chillin’ at home. K-2 is just there. It’s neat. And they don’t just make one action figure of you, there’s like five, and a car, although yeah, I don’t have a car – yet. But yeah, it’s pretty exciting. Do you have action figures already?

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR:: Yeah, Donnie, is this your first one?

DONNIE YEN: Quite a few. [LAUGHTER]

ALAN TUDYK: In your life, do they get like young Donnie to like older Donnie?

DONNIE YEN: No, the biggest one I have is 9 foot tall, bigger than [SOUNDS LIKE] you, baby.

ALAN TUDYK: Wow, no doubt. You could just crush mine with your foot.

ALAN TUDYK: Wow.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR:: Next.

ALAN TUDYK: John, you have an [INDISCERNIBLE] figure.

JOHN KNOLL: I don’t actually.

ALAN TUDYK: Oh, oh, oh. You can take one of the K-2SO ones.

JOHN KNOLL: Oh, thank you.

FEMALE SPEAKER: We’ll have to get that worked out.

FEMALE SPEAKER: You can make one, John.

PRESS: [PH] Jerome May, [PH] Philadelphia Daily News. I have a two part question. One’s for Gareth. I just want to say from the footage I saw it’s a tremendous accomplishment. What was your challenge, you think, ‘cause the tone on this is so much different from other Star Wars films. It’s more a war movie and a heist movie as they say. And how you have that different tone, so you get something different, but still feel like Star Wars was the challenge with that. And for Kathy, you know, follow-up question a lot of people ask is, you know, one of the things that slightly annoys me when people bring up, oh, you have a female lead, it’s as if we’ve never had a strong female character before, you know, from Bette Davis to Katniss Everdeen, there’s been a lot of strong female characters. You know, how do you feel about that, and how do you feel that I just feel that from what I’ve seen, she has an opportunity to be one of the most [SOUNDS LIKE] verbal characters, period, that we’ve seen.

GARETH EDWARDS: For awhile I couldn’t see who was saying that. [OVERLAPPING] I was like, [INDISCERNIBLE] are you hearing that voice.

KATHY KENNEDY: Sorry if we look weird up here because these two lights are shining in our eyes and so it’s really hard to see you guys, so maybe if you like wave at us or something.

GARETH EDWARDS: I thought it was Ben Kenobi again, [LAUGHTER] it was like [OVERLAPPING]. Yeah, you hear that sometimes, right? During the shoot I would hear him, he would say like, put down the camera, let go.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: So what was your question?

PRESS: Okay, my question is –

GARETH EDWARDS: Tone, it was about tone.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: Tone.

GARETH EDWARDS: Yeah, the tone was – I mean, we essentially got license to be different on this movie and take a risk, you know? The great thing about being a standalone film we don’t really have to exist for other movies to continue, etc., and so we could be brave and that’s what we did. And I feel like in terms of Star Wars that I love, tonally, I guess the one were like, you know, aiming for was something like Empire Strikes Back, where our movie even though we take it quite seriously there’s a lot of fun and humor in it, and hope, you know, is the key thing, is that it’s about trying to achieve something. I mean, the story really behind the movie is like all these different people from all these different backgrounds that have very little in common, if they believe in a good, you know, future for the world, they could come together and we all are better off when we work together than on our own and so we just tried to make the most realistic version of Star Wars that we’d seen and it involved a lot of different techniques but I can’t even remember Kathy’s question.

KATHY KENNEDY: I can remember it.

GARETH EDWARDS: You can remember it.

KATHY KENNEDY: So I think you’re absolutely right. I find that it is a bit irritating that when there’s progress being made and strong female characters being created, it tends to be forgotten, and I think that’s because long periods of time go on in between. But I think it speaks to what I was talking about before which is these are big tent pole sort of frankly male driven, boy driven kinds of entertainment in the past, and that’s why I was saying that I think the idea of a female hero is what’s new. I think that heroine concept is what’s been lacking, and I think in this movie the irony is she’s not, as you say, necessarily just a female hero, she’s just a very strong, wonderful character in a movie, and to highlight that as being something specific to being a woman, I agree, I think that that’s what I hope disappears over time, that we’re not constantly highlighting this as though it’s something unusual, but that it actually just becomes the vernacular of storytelling.

PRESS: Okay, I’m to your left. This question is for Gareth. I know I can’t see you but I’ll put my head here. [OVERLAPPING] There’s obviously a huge anticipation for this movie and rightly so, but for those, you know, who are not the diehard sci-fi fans or Star Wars fans at all, do you feel that they have to maybe revisit the whole Star Wars universe to appreciate this or is this more of a standalone and we can [INDISCERNIBLE].

KATHY KENNEDY: It’s absolutely a standalone. I think the great thing is that this could be a real introduction to the whole franchise for many people who haven’t necessarily followed it, or younger people who don’t know that much about Star Wars, and other parts of the world who don’t know that much about Star Wars. So it really does stand on its own.
PRESS: So my name is [PH] Brian. I’m asking about the footage last night. There seemed to be a moral complexity to the universe there, whether that’s Cassian doing things that maybe aren’t the most [OVERLAPPING] heroic.

DIEGO LUNA Shhh.

DIEGO LUNA What do you mean?

PRESS: Or even all the toy packaging for K-2SO says that maybe he’s trying to make up for something. I mean, he is an Imperial droid. I’m wondering if all of you could kind of speak to that moral gray area where Star Wars before always seemed to very black and white about heroes and villains.

KATHY KENNEDY: Diego, you talked a lot about that.

DIEGO LUNA: Yeah, I think it’s – and it connects with – hello – it’s like censorship [OVERLAPPING]. I want to communicate to the world, please. Let me – there you go. I think it’s a modern approach to Star Wars, and we live in a different world today, you know. If you revisit all the films, it’s kind of like a stamp of what was going on and a reflection on the world back then, you know? And ours has to do the same. And we live in a diverse – a diversial world where racial and cultural diversity is in fact making us richer and more interesting. But it is a complex world we live in, and making the right choice many times looks horrible, you know? And these people are in war. You know, when you mentioned Cassian doing something not heroic, I would say, no, Cassian, it’s a true hero, as Jyn and everyone in this team, you know? It’s just that they are the heroes we can be, just regular people doing amazing stuff you know, and no special powers, no Jedi’s, it’s just conviction and teamwork and yeah, that hope of actually being able to shape the reality we live in, and that makes them great, you know? But yes, they have to make choices on the way and war is horrible. I mean, no one wants war to happen, none of these characters would choose war, you know, but it’s the last chance, you know, and they have to do it.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: Before we take a break, I have a question for you, Alan. A lot of people –

ALAN TUDYK: What?

MALE SPEAKER: Just a very good answer [OVERLAPPING].

ALAN TUDYK: Thank you, because I was very nervous of screwing [OVERLAPPING]. I’m glad you say it.

MALE SPEAKER: Spot on.

MALE SPEAKER: Thank you very much [INDISCERNIBLE]. Thank you. Okay, we can keep going.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR:: Alan, I have a question for you. So a lot of people think that the K2 is strictly CG, but you were actually on set in like a [PH] mocap suit and stilts and stuff.

ALAN TUDYK: Yes, yes.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: What was that performance like? What was like being on set with everyone who was in character and you were kind of removed from it a bit?

ALAN TUDYK: I got this, Diego. He’s going to give his opinion of it. Diego is very funny about certain aspects of my costume, let’s say. I was wearing a, you know, fully body jumpsuit sort of thing, and it’s such a new technology, even still. We’ve been introduced to it a lot of different ways. Sometimes people wear cameras on their heads, sometimes there’s dots all over their face, they have balls all over their suit. The way that ILM did it, I wore a suit that was very comfortable, it didn’t have all of that restriction on it, it just had interesting designs on it which [OVERLAPPING]. It was very cool looking [OVERLAPPING]. Come on. It was like a luge costume from like the Italian team, like it looked cool. And yeah, I mean, it didn’t have the colors, but still – and then I was on stilts so I was 7 foot 1, so I towered over everyone most of the time, and it was great, you know, just even at that height it colors how you move and helped me get into character. It was fantastic.

DIEGO LUNA It wasn’t

ALAN TUDYK: It was [OVERLAPPING] basically just acting, but then the makeup and the costume came later, but because you’re on set you are able to create a character with the other actors. Without that, you can’t tell a story with the true character who can react in a moment. With some of the stuff Diego’s throwing at you, you need to be able to throw it right back.

KATHY KENNEDY: And Alan, I think you’re shortchanging yourself a little bit too because you stepped into amazing iconography with robots in Star Wars and you know, when you figure that C-3PO and R2-D2 and now BB-8, what was amazing about what Alan did is he had to find what that individual sense was so that he could create another robot in the family of robots in Star Wars, and I think he definitely did that. He’s going to be very memorable.

GARETH EDWARDS: I think John Knoll [INDISCERNIBLE] to this is that there’s a feeling, you can’t help it because it’s CGI, there’s a feeling on set which is, you know, if we change our minds, you want to change his performance a little bit, it’s in the computer, maybe we can worry about that later.

ALAN TUDYK: You kept saying that [SOUNDS LIKE] again and again and that’s why - -

GARETH EDWARDS: No, and we shot the whole thing as if K2 was – whatever Alan did on set, whatever it was, was exactly what K2 was going to do in the final film. And so, you know, K2 would get, you know, when Alan, no offense, but would screw up a few times, and we’d do multiple, multiple takes. Even though you’re thinking, oh, can’t you just animate this stuff – and you can’t – and what we learned was on the very few occasions, there were times where we wanted to tweak something, we’d go, you know what, just make it do something a little bit different to what Alan did, and every single time it didn’t work, and we had to be true to Alan’s performance all the time. And even when we wanted to tweak something, we got Alan back and we re-recorded him on film and copied his performance, ‘cause he is K2. And a lot of the humor that’s in the film that’s really funny is just this guy improvising. He was given freedom to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, and there are shots we couldn’t use ‘cause sometimes I was behind the camera and I’m laughing, and the camera’s rocking up and down and there’s stuff we can’t even talk about, but it was hilarious.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: It will be on the behind the scenes documentary right?

GARETH EDWARDS: Yeah.

DIEGO LUNA I can tell you the truth now. No, it’s completely right, like when they go like you’re going to do a science fiction film, or you’re gonna, yeah, work with droids, you have the feeling you’re just going to have to imagine everything. And here we were interacting with an actor and making choices on the way. After the first month – because the first month we just couldn’t look at him because he did look ridiculous with this outfit. It was the tightest pajamas ever, and because he had the stilts you were always the height of his balls here, you know? [LAUGHTER] I mean, that just made Alan – it was quite intimidating. [LAUGHTER] And then he’s – yeah, well, he’s really tall, right? So he was there. But then when he had to run there was a version of him that it was just a backpack

ALAN TUDYK: backpack of shame.

DIEGO LUNA without the stilts, with like the face of K2 on the top. But it just looked so cheesy, like so badly done, like suddenly they went for the Mexican version, you know [LAUGHTER] and [OVERLAPPING].

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: All right. Well, I think we are going to take a quick break.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: On that note.

ANDI GUTIERREZ -MODERATOR: We can leave it at that. We’ll take a quick break and then we’ll be back up here with another group in just a few minutes. So hang tight. So thank you guys.

MALE SPEAKER: Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]
[END AUDIO]