Our first Star Wars spinoff, ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, hits theaters in just two weeks and will bring with it a whole new collection of action-fi, er, characters, one of which will be K-2SO, a reprogrammed Imperial security droid now loyal to the Rebel Alliance. Alan Tudyk (Firefly) lent his voice to the newest droid in the STAR WARS franchise but he was actually on set for the entire production performing motion-capture as well. Tudyk recently spoke with THR to chat about K-2SO, what was involved in bringing him to life and how he'll differ from Jar Jar Binks.
It’s motion capture. So, you will hear my voice, but I was there for the whole thing. It was a blast. It’s basically acting, but you’re wearing a silly costume and the actual costume comes later in post. But you’re working with the other actors, so the lines change and you’re affected by their performance. You’re part of making the role and making the movie there on set as opposed to animation, which is very different. There’s one animated character that’s a good example of Star Wars animation gone bad, which is Jar Jar Binks. He was 100 percent animated and it didn’t go well. It became cartoonish and I think a lot of that can be attributed to the way that it was done.
Alan Tudyk added that he's lucky that the droids in the STAR WARS movies are not just emotionless robots and that they're some of the audience's favourite characters in the franchise. However, given that there are so many iconic droids in the STAR WARS universe, you'd imagine that Tudyk would find it a challenge to make K-2SO stand out.
No, it was written really distinctly. He’s very different from the others because he comes from the Empire. He’s a security droid, so he can be an intimidating force and can be enforcing. Some people call him an enforcer droid, which seems appropriate. And he’s a spy and a soldier. Playing a droid also gives you the possibility to pop up in other Star Wars films since they don’t age like the human characters.
We already know that there won't be a sequel to ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, but Tudyk is still holding out hope that K-2SO will pop up in further installments of the franchise.
I’m doing my best. (Laughs) Sure, why not? All these worlds are intertwined. It’s exciting to me what they’re doing with these stand-alones. You can criss-cross those timelines at any point. They’re creating them. They’re giving these backstories to characters and filling in blank spots like ours.
ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY will hit theaters on December 16th.