Andy Serkis Hates What Star Wars Did To Him
Andy Serkis admits that he hated how Star Wars killed off his villainous character Snoke.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is so divisive that it has led to countless fans wondering if it ruined the franchise, especially after those fans saw how the movie treated characters like the mysterious new bad guy, Snoke. As it turns out, nobody hates what happened to Snoke more than his actor, future Luther: The Fallen Sun star Andy Serkis, and he still resents his unceremonious exit from the Star Wars franchise. As he revealed in an interview with British GQ, “When I went in to read The Last Jedi, [I spent] the first 30 pages thinking, ‘This is the most incredible character,’” but after he “turned the page” and discovered how his character ”gets sliced in half,” he felt “gutted.”
It’s a tad surprising to hear a star, even someone as popular as veteran genre actor Andy Serkis, openly express his displeasure with a Star Wars movie. For example, while we can only assume that younger stars like Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac, and especially John Boyega were disappointed at how their characters were written in the sequel trilogy, they rarely express displeasure (although Boyega’s hilarious old interview quote “you ain’t going to Disney+ me’ may tell us exactly how he feels). However, Serkis may feel more confident than his younger costars due to his many years in the industry or, perhaps even more likely, he’s just feeling himself right now.
Think about it: it wasn’t that long ago that fans mostly associated Andy Serkis with Lord of the Rings instead of Star Wars because of his iconic performance as Gollum. But in recent years, Serkis has had major roles in Black Panther and The Batman, and he returned to Star Wars more recently to steal the show from his costars in every scene of Andor in which he appeared. In other words, Serkis likely feels safe about his career in Hollywood in general and with Disney in particular, and he doesn’t mind calling out a bad script choice when he sees it.
Unfortunately, weird script choices were as inevitable as a lightsaber duel in this new trilogy, and that was clear long before Andy Serkis was cast to play Snoke in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Despite paying George Lucas over $4 billion for the rights to the most popular franchise in the world, Disney made the insane decision to not come up with a long-term plan for those three movies the way that, say, a phase in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be planned out.
The result is that directors were free to take stories and characters in unexpected directions under the assumption that the next director would build off of it, which (among other things) forced J.J. Abrams to suddenly bring Emperor Palpatine back in Rise of Skywalker because Snoke, his new Big Bad, was sacrificed in the last movie by Knives Out director Rian Johnson just to make Kylo Ren look cool.
Aside from the lingering resentment, though, Andy Serkis has maintained a good relationship with Disney, and we hope to see his character again in Star Wars: Andor (though his last episode implied that would be highly unlikely). And we’re really looking forward to seeing him star in Mouse Guard, the animated film adaptation of David Petersen’s graphic novel, assuming that the movie ever sees the light of day. If it is shelved for good, though, it may spare Serkis the trauma of discovering yet another of his characters getting unexpectedly sliced in half.
