Ashley Eckstein Reveals She Still Wants To Appear In Live-Action Star Wars Project
You will be hard pressed to find a more enthusiastic, uplifting, and supporting ambassador of the Star Wars franchise than Ashley Eckstein. The actress, who provided not only the voice of Ahsoka Tano but has also played an important role in the development of that character is always at the forefront when it comes to interacting with fans and making Star Wars more accessible, especially for girls and women.
But now it seems as if Eckstein is counting on the fans to make her dream of becoming part of a live-action Star Wars project come true.
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When “Snips” was first introduced in the theatrical release of The Clone Wars, both the teenage Togruta and her voice actor had to face some backlash. Not only didn’t the fandom react kindly to the fact that Anakin Skywalker had a padawan after all (who was never even mentioned in Revenge of the Sith), but her feisty kind of behavior and her way of talking (remember “Skyguy” and “R2-y”?) were seen by many as sheer annoyances.
Over the course of the following years, the character matured and grew a lot and while Ahsoka is now frequently regarded as a role model for female Star Wars characters, Ashley Eckstein became a vital ambassador for the Star Wars fandom.
She provided Ahsoka’s voice not only in all seven seasons of The Clone Wars and later on in Rebels, but also in several animated shorts, and video games and she was also the narrator of E.K. Johnston’s Ahsoka novel. While doing all that she still had time to establish a clothing company, Her Universe, that produces and sells apparel, especially for female Star Wars fans (later expanding into other franchises as well) - and is a frequent guest and even host at various conventions.
Still, Ashley Eckstein has yet to make the jump from animated to live-action Star Wars. When Anakin’s former padawan first appeared “in the flesh” in season 2 of The Mandalorian, the actress behind the mask was Rosario Dawson, who also appeared in The Book of Boba Fett and will continue to do so in her dedicated Disney+ show, which is currently in production. Eckstein didn’t even get to provide Ahsoka’s voice, which also came from Dawson. She recently admitted, that she currently has absolutely no involvement in any of the shows, created by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni and that she has never even met Dawson to this day.
She hasn’t given up hope yet to land a role in a Star Wars live-action project and one part that has come up recently is that of Avar Kriss, based on the resemblance of Eckstein with the Jedi Master due to her golden hair. Eckstein has been made aware of this resemblance and now hopes that the fans will speak up for her:
“I'll be honest, I read about how Rosario was fantastic as Ahsoka; how the fans started asking for her to play Ahsoka. If the fans want to ask for me to play this character, that would be incredible. I would be honored to make the jump to live-action for the High Republic. Hey, it worked for Ahsoka. Maybe it will work for me to be in The High Republic! [...] I would love it.”
For those unaware, Avar Kriss is one of the main protagonists of Lucasfilm’s The High Republic media endeavor. She was a Jedi Master with an extremely deep connection to and control of the Force, at one time even the Marshall of Starlight Beacon, an enormous space station in the Outer Rim territories.
Besides the ongoing book and comic series et in this era, Lucasfilm has announced several projects outside the realm of publishing taking place in the High Republic era, like the live-action series The Acolyte, the upcoming video game Eclipse or the recently announced animated show Young Jedi Adventures.
The problem is, that both The Acolyte and Eclipse are set rather at the tail end of this roughly 200 years long era, while Avar Kriss was alive and active at the beginning, so her (and probably Eckstein’s) role in one of these projects would probably rather be in form of a Force ghost or a hologram than in flesh and blood.
As Lucasfilm is betting heavily on The High Republic it could announce a live-action project featuring Avar Kriss at any time, which could, in turn, put Ashley Eckstein, who has done some acting at the beginning of the 2000s, on the map of the show’s creators.
Even if this doesn’t come to fruition, there is still a chance that she might at least land a small part in one of the shows of Favreau and Filoni. Matt Lanter, who has provided the voice of Ahsoka’s master in The Clone Wars has had a cameo in season 1 of The Mandalorian, so there is no reason why something like this couldn’t happen to Ashley Eckstein as well, especially if there is some fan-push behind it.
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Source: Screenrant