You wait ages for some information about Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and then a torrent comes all at once. That’s courtesy of today’s Vanity Fair cover story, in which a load of delicious morsels about the next Star Wars film were revealed. Each of these news nuggets fills in some blanks about the upcoming blockbuster, and we’re hungry for as many as we can get. One of the more tantalizing, though, was the reveal of who Laura Dern and Benicio Del Toro will be playing.
Rian Johnson reveals that Del Toro is portraying a shady character simply called DJ. Judging from the character photo, DJ’s a pretty sleazy guy, even by Star Wars standards, looking like he’s spent the night in a Mos Eisley dumpster sleeping off a Rodian spice liquor binge. Johnson wouldn’t give any details on who DJ’s allied with, and he looks a bit too seedy for the Resistance and too dishevelled for the First Order, so it’s anyone’s guess. But Johnson did say, “You’ll see – there’s a reason why we call him DJ.” I’m betting it’s because he’s got some serious scratching skills on the ones and twos.
Dern’s character, meanwhile, is confirmed to be Admiral Amilyn Holdo (which was rumoured last month). She’s a high-ranking officer in the Resistance, and is hard to miss with her striking magenta hair color and matching gown. According to Lucasfilm Story Group creative executive Pablo Hidalgo, her look is due to her “cultural background,” though he confirms that at minimum, she’s human. With the tragic death of Carrie Fisher late last year, could Admiral Holdo be destined for a promotion in subsequent films to fill that tragic Leia-shaped gap?
We’ll find out more about this pair when Star Wars: The Last Jedi releases on December 15th.
