‘The Acolyte’ Stars Performed With Lightsabers ‘All Day, Every Day’

It took approximately 240 hours of training to turn “The Acolyte” actress like Danfe Keen into a certified Jedi master. That meant 240 hours of lightsaber exercises, strength training, stunt work and movement coaching by a dedicated team of instructors at Lucasfilm. But according to Keen, the most “surreal” part of her regiment was the “force meetings,” where each force user sat in a quiet room in “The Acolyte” and discussed mysterious space magic with an expert “Star Wars” advisor. .

“You’re asking questions about the power to this all-knowing man named Pablo [Hidlago], who has been with Lucasfilm for decades,” Keen explained Thursday at the premiere of “The Acolyte” in Los Angeles. “And every time you had doubts, you said, ‘I have to talk to Pablo.'”

Although Hidalgo was absent, Keen and the rest of her Jedi trainees celebrated the release of Disney’s latest Star Wars saga “The Acolyte” Thursday evening at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood.

‘The Acolyte’ is set in the ‘High Republic era’. The series follows Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) as he tracks down a deadly, force-wielding assassin known as the Acolyte (Amandla Stenberg). Charlie Barnett joins the ranks of Jedi alongside Jung-jae, who made sure to find time for fun amid all the rigorous preparations. He said he and his co-stars played Jedi with their prop lightsabers “all day, every day.”

“You know, there are some walls that are dented. Not gonna lie,” Barnett joked.

As for Stenberg’s training, she was grateful to have action superstar Carrie-Anne Moss as a mentor. The first scene in “The Acolyte” shows a fight between the pair, and according to Stenberg, she learned a lot “just by observing her.”

“I get really hyper-fixated on technical skills and demonstrating the movements perfectly, but what I learned from her… is that it’s just about how you interpret [the movement] as that character,” Stenberg said. “She is also a very spiritual, grounded individual. She always told me that you can’t do the work if you don’t take care of yourself first and feel rooted in yourself as a person.”

“The Acolyte” premieres June 4 on Disney+.