Sigourney Weaver on Star Wars: “It was a view of the future where different aliens worked and lived side by side”

From indomitable space-survivor Ellen Ripley in Alien (1979) to ruthless executive Katharine Parker in Working Girl (1988) and sardonic housewife Janey Carver in The Ice Storm (1997), Sigourney Weaver has made a career from specialising in playing tough, controlled characters. Now Weaver is appearing as Colonel Ward in The Mandalorian and Grogu, and co-star Pedro Pascal has declared: “Better than being in Star Wars for me is being in a movie with Sigourney Weaver. She’s just the biggest badass.” 

Pascal’s comment begs the question, who would Weaver give that title? “Immediately, I think of Bette Davis, and All About Eve [1950],” she says. “It’s still such a groundbreaking performance. It’s so honest and the whole set-up is so real.” Weaver explains: “I find her inspiring, but I find that in a lot of the very strong women’s movies that were made back then. Clearly, they thought women could do anything, good and bad.” 

When we meet to discuss this new film, the 12th live-action Star Wars film in 49 years but the first since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, Weaver considers the appeal of playing Ward in connection with the franchise’s most famous female role and is “very happy to be playing someone in the armed services, someone who came up in the rebellion within the same generation as Princess Leia”.

Ward, like Carrie Fisher’s Leia, becomes a powerful military figure. She enlists bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pascal) to hunt down the galaxy’s remaining empire villains for the New Republic and sets the adventures of this romp in motion. “It’s an honour to play someone who’s serving as a commander in the outer rim, where there’s so much bad stuff still going on,” Weaver says.  

Lou Thomas: What’s your first memory of the Star Wars saga?   

Sigourney Weaver: I was working off, off, off Broadway with Christopher Durang and various other obscure playwrights and I was in the audience at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York – which was our greatest theatre, it’s no longer active – seeing A New Hope (1977) with everybody else. I remember enjoying it very much because it was a view of the future where lots of different aliens worked and lived side by side together, somewhat peacefully. Except for the Evil Empire.

Your character calls the shots at the start, then later on gets stuck into the action. Do you prefer playing characters who are in charge, those who get their hands dirty, or something where there’s a bit of both?  

I never choose a job for the character. I choose it for the story and I figure I can figure out how to make my part work. Our director Jon Favreau and I kept building up Colonel Ward, finding out specifically who she was and who she is. To then become a pilot and fly an X Wing is, to me, what she really did during the rebellion. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten to do. 

You mentioned Jon. He’s gone from being this indie darling with Swingers [1996], and then to directing Iron Man [2008] and being an important figure in the MCU, and now he’s in charge of this. What is it that marks him out as a director?  

Jon is, first and foremost, the most passionate movie-goer and movie-lover. [In] this film there are very sophisticated shots that he saw in Kurosawa and Scorsese. This is very much a satisfying adult movie, as well as a really cool kids’ adventure. His mastery of the medium is very evident in this film, even though it has such a simple premise. He’s got an encyclopaedic knowledge of the camera and of FX and all these other things, and he does cast beautifully. Pedro is the perfect Mandalorian.  

You’ve been a prominent figure in the Avatar, Alien and Star Wars worlds. What is it about these great sci-fi stories that really appeals to you?  

I’m always fascinated by what we have humans doing in the future because it hasn’t happened yet. We’re all looking out into space, thinking, “Who will we be there? How will we live? How will we get along with our neighbours who have more than one head, or tails, or whatever?” Because that hasn’t happened yet, that’s still ahead of us. So I feel like anything in the future is going to feel more relevant to me.

This film is derived from a successful TV show that itself is a spin-off of a huge cinema franchise. Is there a message there about what we need to do to actually entice people back to the theatrical experience? Because things are up from last year, but we’re still 20% down from 2019.  

Every month we get a little closer back to reminding people how wonderful it is to see a movie in the theatre, especially a movie like this. To see this movie in IMAX – which I plan to do at the premiere – is going to be just an awesome experience. I think people are reminding each other of what it feels like to see a movie with other people and to share that excitement. It doesn’t matter if you’re all cheering at once or anything else. It’s such a different chemistry when you can share it with other humans. 

What are the most important things that you look for in a film on the big screen?  

I love to be taken away. I love to go some place far away and lose myself, forget what’s going on in the world and have something else illuminated for me that I hadn’t thought of. 

I feel that’s what movies do, at their best. Bringing us together but also opening our minds and hearts to our shared humanity at a time like this, especially when there seems to be so much acrimony and miscommunication and suspicion. It’s a perfect time for Mandalorian to come out and take us all the way to a galaxy far away.  

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is in cinemas including BFI IMAX from 22 May.