'The Acolyte' Production Designer Discusses The Various Planets Seen In The Show

Star Wars

Aug 16

Now that The Acolyte has wrapped up, some of the staff who worked on the show have begun to speak about the behind-the-scenes matters of the show. Specifically, Kevin Jenkins, the show's product designer, spoke about the planets.

“Madeira is a startling island off the coast of Africa, a Portuguese island, which to me looks like Hawaii,” he said talking about the place used to film scenes taking place at Ueda. “It’s this amazing jutting forested rock that comes out of the sea. On one of the headlands [Ponta de São Lourenço] we discovered a microclimate that was like a brown dusty Western, which is what we wanted for Ueda. Even though it’s very quick and fast scene, it was the perfect location.”

“Olega is essentially Casablanca in space.” He was describing Shinfield Studios, where Olega, the planet where Mae infiltrated the Jedi. “It’s screaming blue and red. So much of Star Wars, apart from being white, black and gray – the colors of war and the Empire – is a ‘brown desert planet.’ So we tried to really pull away from that to give each place, each locale its own kind of color identity.”

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“What was really interesting about Wales, especially Southern Wales, is that it had a very raw sort of feeling to it,” he says when describing the location where scenes on Brendok were filmed. “What also gravitated us to the area was the location of the landing of the [Jedi starship] Polan, which became our anchor base. Just behind us in that same valley was this old 18th-century dam, this massive black stone brick wall. And nearby was this wonderful forest where the whole floor was a bed of moss growing up the trees that I thought could be where the girls are first introduced. So with the moss forest, the valley vistas and this dam that’s singing out to be used, Wales just seemed to tick all the boxes.”

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