Star Wars has never relied on famous faces to sell itself to audiences, with most of the major roles across all nine movies being filled by either relative unknowns, rising young talents or recognizable character actors. Harrison Ford may have gone on to spend decades at the top of the industry, but he was far from the first choice to play Han Solo, before George Lucas decided that less visible names would make it easier for viewers to invest in the mythology.
That trend has continued to this day, too, with the cast of The Mandalorian populated by actors that people know, but you wouldn’t exactly call A-listers. Despite this, Katee Sackhoff admitted that she thought the role of Bo-Katan would be filled by a bigger name when the fan favorite character was posed to make the jump into live-action, despite establishing herself as one of the most prominent actresses in the sci-fi genre thanks to the likes of Battlestar Galactica, Riddick, 2036 Origin Unknown, Another Life and, of course, The Clone Wars and Rebels.
“I always joked, of course they’ll recast it, they’ll probably hire Scarlett Johansson. But when Mandalorian came out and I saw Dave Filoni, I made a joke about Bo-Katan, you know, wink wink, nudge, nudge. I’ve been playing characters like this for fifteen years, buddy. I never really thought it would happen. I was just sort of joking.”
Sackhoff may have been joking when she bumped into Filoni, but the live-action Bo-Katan wound up playing a small but pivotal role in season 2 of The Mandalorian, and the chances are she’ll be a much more prominent figure in the third run of episodes, with plenty of speculation already making the rounds that her resentment towards Din Djarin for rightfully inheriting the Darksaber could be the driving force of the narrative.
Of course, not everyone’s going to get the chance to reprise their animated parts in live-action as we’ve seen with Ahsoka Tano, but you can’t deny that Sackhoff gave Bo-Katan a seamless transition, and she’s now set to become a major part of The Mandalorian‘s rapidly expanding universe.
