Compared to the rest of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy’s central quartet, Daisy Ridley faces arguably the toughest battle in trying to outrun the shadow of the franchise for the rest of her career.
John Boyega is already doing his best to distance himself as far away from Finn as possible by signing on to a number of projects in a variety of genres, Oscar Isaac was a Golden Globe winner and a fast-rising talent before The Force Awakens was even released, and Adam Driver is a two-time Academy Award nominee regarded as one of the most interesting character actors of his generation.
Ridley, meanwhile, was plucked from obscurity to play the driving force behind the trio of big budget blockbusters, while she’s only appeared in two live-action films outside of Star Wars, with the third widely expected to bomb at the box office after Chaos Walking has spent the last two and a half years sitting on the shelf.
It wasn’t surprising when the actress recently admitted that she cried all day once shooting on The Rise of Skywalker had wrapped up, then, and in a new interview she compared leaving the franchise behind to the grieving process, after Star Wars dominated her life for so many years.
“I was like, ‘What am I supposed to do now?’. I guess it was sort of like grieving. These relationships and this amount of time had come to an end. It really felt like I was letting go of something emotionally.”
While there’s been constant speculation that Ridley could one day make a return to the series that turned her into a household name, the immediate focus will be on establishing herself outside of the Star Wars comfort zone as she looks to build up a body of work that separates her from Rey, even though the character will more than likely always define her.
