Have you tuned in yet to Star Wars: Skeleton Crew?
Source: Courtesy / Disney +
On Monday, Disney+ launched their all-new series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew follows the journey of four kids who make a mysterious discovery on their seemingly safe home planet, then get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy. Finding their way home—and meeting unlikely allies and enemies—will be a greater adventure than they ever imagined. The series stars Jude Law, Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Kyriana Kratter, Robert Timothy Smith, Tunde Adebimpe, Kerry Condon and Nick Frost.
Check out the trailer below:
Global Grind Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden spoke with Star Wars: Skeleton Crew stars Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Robert Timothy Smith and Kyriana Kratter about working together and playing characters representing the next generation of ‘Star Wars’ storytelling. The show was conceived by longtime collaborators Jon Watts and Christopher Ford, who imagined a group of kids on an epic quest — each with some very specific personality traits; an imaginative day dreamer, a risk taker, a loyal best friend and a tech wiz.
In the tradition of other Star Wars projects, Skeleton Crew’s latest production features a diverse cast of humans, droids, aliens — and the realistic makeup and VFX that will make audiences forget that actors like Robert Timothy Smith aren’t actually blue-green extraterrestrials with elephant trunks.
“At first I was kind of upset, like ‘Aw man now people aren’t like gonna know who I am!’” Smith said of having his face hidden by prosthetics and makeup for the full season of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. “I’m like, ‘I need to make money here — come on people!’ Now since it’s starting to come out and people are really like loving my character – Neel Nation — it’s been really kind of funny how much love Neel is getting. I’m like ‘OK people like me I’m gonna make money!”
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Ravi Cabot-Conyers’ character Wim is the kid who just can’t keep out of trouble throughout the series. In fact, it’s his curiosity that inadvertently sets the kids off on their adventure when he hits a switch — despite being told several times not to touch anything.
“This guy just wants an adventure,” Ravi told GlobalGrind. “Sure he makes some questionable choices, but he just wants to get out of there. He wants to he wants to escape from his own feelings. You know it’s too much for him. I had a really fun time playing Wim because of his very interesting qualities. I share a lot of qualities with him. The mindless touching buttons is not one of them, but I liked playing that side of him. I wanted to get really familiar with the character. I tried to find similar characteristics that we shared when I first got the material and then after I found out I got the part. I found a lot of stuff so it’s been fun incorporating some of my qualities into this character going from point A to point B.”
Kyriana Kratter’s character KB wears cybernetic implants and a visor as a result of an accident she had — but she’s a genius when it comes to technology.
“When I first put it on, it was kind of scary because it was super dark, I could not see anything and I was really scared I was gonna trip,” Kratter said of the visor her character wears. “When I was looking through the visor it’s like a colander, so there’s multiple little holes and then there were like different versions of smaller holes and bigger holes like based on like how close they were going to get and so that was really cool. ”
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Ryan Kiera Armstrong plays KB’s best friend Fern, who has a strong personality and the leadership skills to match. Early in the action she and Wim seem to bump heads, but we’re anticipating a lot of growth and change in the group dynamics as the foursome fight to find their way home.
“Without spoiling, I think it’s definitely a journey and she’s kind of like at that awkward stage that we all kind of go through in life,” Armstrong told GlobalGrind. “Finding who we are and our relationship to the world and other people around us and I think that’s kind of where she’s at so I think you’ll see that process and her develop.”
“The arcs are so much fun,” Ravi Cabot-Conyers added.
“I had never actually worked with kids before, like really ever so when I got the script I was really inspired by it,” Armstrong continued. “You know this is Star Wars through the eyes of kids and we kind of all grew together throughout the filming process yeah which was really fun. We kind of shot in order too, so we were living the experiences together.”
“I agree with Ryan, it all really did feel so real and I think that it was really special,” Cabot-Conyers said. “It’s so unique seeing the Star Wars universe through the eyes of kids. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before and I think that that’s what makes it such a good introduction for younger generations to the Star Wars universe and even adults who will enjoy that nostalgic feeling because you can kind of notice there’s many homages played to ’80s Amblin style, and I think it’s really fun for everybody — even if you have no prior Star Wars experience. No matter your age, I think it’s very fun.”
The eight-episode season was directed by Jon Watts (Eps.101 & 108); David Lowery (Eps. 102 & 103); the Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) (Ep. 104); Jake Schreier (Ep. 105); Bryce Dallas Howard (Ep. 106); and Lee Isaac Chung (Ep. 107).
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is streaming on Disney +.
