Andy Serkis spills new details about The Force Awakens’ Supreme Leader Snoke

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

I'll just throw this up out front, if you're looking to avoid any sort of spoilers for STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, you may want to avoid the following, although, in my opinion, what follows is fairly mild as far as spoilers go.

Andy Serkis' character from STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS has largely been a mystery, but Serkis spoke up just last week and revealed a few details about who Supreme Leader Snoke is, saying that he's "quite an enigmatic character, and strangely vulnerable at the same time as being quite powerful." Now, the talented actor and motion-performance superstar has opened up once again to Empire and spilled a few more details on his mysterious villain.

I worked specifically with Domhnall Gleeson and with Adam Driver. My first day was basically standing on a 25-foot podium doing Lord Snoke without the faintest idea what he looked like… or in fact who he was! I was very high up, totally on my own, away from everybody else, but acting with them. We used sort of a ‘Kongolizer’ method of having sound come out of speakers to give a sense of scale and distance for the character. So it was very challenging and scary, in fact probably one of my most scary film experiences I’ve ever had.

We knew that Snoke was going to be large, but from the way Andy Serkis is describing him, he may very well be even bigger than we'd imagined. Serkis had previously said that Supreme Leader Snoke couldn't have been realized as a practical effect/make-up, and the character's immense size likely had something to do with that. Andy Serkis described Snoke as "severely damaged," but "although he's a powerful leader, he comes across as vulnerable. Very scarred and disfigured." There are a multitude of characters and locations which I can't wait to see in STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, but finally getting a look at Andy Serkis' character is pretty high up there.

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS opens on December 18, 2015, which is basically a month away at this point. We can do this.