Recently, Lupita Nyong’o, who plays the wizened, friendly alien Maz Kanata, revealed the surprising news that she hadn’t yet gotten in the ping-pong ball suit for Star Wars: Episode VIII. It made us wonder what role, exactly, Kanata would play in the movie. And if an update from Nyong’o holds true, the answer is “probably not much!”
It appears Nyong’o, who has the Mira Nair-directed chess drama Queen of Katwe arriving this Friday, spent the last week in the suit for Rian Johnson. But, speaking on Ellen, she doesn’t seem terribly confident we’ll see much of what she shot:
I shot my scenes, it’s coming out – you never really know, when you shoot your scenes in a movie, which ones are gonna make it and all that. So, it’s always, ‘Fingers crossed!’ But as far as I know, I’m in it.
It would make sense that Kanata would fade into the background a little bit. If you look over the rumors and sort what’s plausible from what’s pretty clearly fanfic being taken too seriously, Episode VIII has a lot of ground to cover with Luke’s past, Rey’s family, just who the heck Snoke actually is, and the fallout of the major death in The Force Awakens. It might simply be that Maz has a scene or two and that’s it. But we’ll find out soon enough, as Episode VIII arrives in December 2017.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
