Showrunners Of 'Skeleton Crew' Talk About Casting And The Freedom To Tell This Story
The latest Star Wars project, Skeleton Crew, has dropped, generating a lot of buzz. It’s doing rather well on Rotten Tomatoes; the discourse on the socials seems to be relatively positive, and we’re only two episodes in.
Star Wars fandom is widespread across age groups. The older ones grew up with it and the classic 80s adventure movies, and according to the showrunners, that’s where much of the show takes its inspiration.
The Gamer recently sat down with Jon Watts and Christopher Ford to discuss the show and their inspiration for its vibe. Watts told Stacey Henley, “You try to go back to the core influences that influenced George.” This is regarding George Lucas’ inspirations from Kirosawa films and old Spaghetti Westerns for A New Hope. Watts and Christopher grew up on the classic 80s adventure movies like The Goonies, and they took inspiration from an era when kids stories were taken “seriously”, with a healthy dose of pirates. Even pirate classics like Treasure Island became part of their inspiration wall.
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They talked to Goonies director Richard Donner about casting for a show with kids as the main characters, and he told them, “When you're casting kids, you don't cast them to play a role. You cast them because of who they are.” They focused on casting the kids on who the kids were and how they fit with the character’s vibe, not how well they acted it. It allows the kid to kind of just become the role and the role to become the kid.
Another thing they discussed is having to let go of directing every episode. Because Watts had worked on Marvel projects, and he had a bunch of freedom there, he was eager to give the other directors they had cast the same opportunity. The relative age range of the directors and their shared childhoods, making them familiar with the inspiration and source material, made it really easy to just let them go for it.
The first two episodes are streaming now on Disney+
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Source(s): The Gamer