From Death Star to Droids: A Rogue One Sit down with Mads Mikkelsen & Alan Tudyk

Mads Mikkelsen & Alan Tudyk are both Actors who’ve had an amazing career. Chances are you’ve seen at least one thing that they’ve done (in my case many). So when I found out that I would be interviewing both during my Rogue One Press trip I was so excited! Mads Mikkelsen is best known for his role as Dr.Hannibal on TV’s Hannibal and most recently as Kaecilius in Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Alan Tudyk is very known for his character roles such as Hei Hei in Disney’s Moana. Together this pair of actors had us laughing from start to finish as we discussed their roles in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Mads can you tell us a little bit about your character?

“My character is called Galen Erso and I am a scientist, working on a project that has the potential of making the world a better place, and also the potential of not doing so. I’m also the father of our hero Jyn Erso.

Alan Can you tell us about your character?

“K-2SO is a droid who was formerly of the Empire, and he’s been reprogrammed by Cassian’s character, and has been working with him prior to our introduction to Jyn so he’s a soldier in the Alliance. His reprogram has caused him to be free with his own personality which invites some brutal honesty in moments where honesty isn’t really required, and he can be funny in that way, sarcastic, and passive aggressive and all those fun things that make them great partners.

Gareth set up the set in a way that everyone was having fun and Alan got to adlib a lot . He didn’t off road the whole time but there were many scenes where his character was able to speak his mind. Alan Said: “I was able to bring life to the scenes, what we were given,and part of that became… just saying whatever I wanted.”

Because Star Wars films are really the gold standard of films for an Actor to find out they are in it is always something incredible so we wanted to find out how it was like and how did both Mads & Alan find out they would be working on Star Wars and what was their initial reaction.

For Mads it was through a phone call. “They asked me, “Gareth called me and pitched the story for me and asked me if I wanted to be on board,I didn’t see a necessity of seeing a script, because it was Star Wars, so I said yes right away. And—and if I hadn’t, if I’d turned it down, I’m sure my kids would’ve killed me.”

Alan:” That would be a tough one, if you said no, ‘cause it’s one that you would then see come out, and then you’d go UGH”

Mads: ” And I would always dream about I might’ve had an action figure.”

Alan also got a call from Gareth “He wanted to talk to me and we Skyped. And, I knew it was for a droid in Star Wars. But I didn’t think he was calling me to talk about ME being in it, um… he just wanted to talk about droids and motion capture. And I had done a motion capture robot in I, Robot. And so I was like, that makes sense – I’d be the go-to actor to just discuss how…how it’s done, how to do it. It was a really frank conversation between the two of us, because I didn’t think of myself as in the running, just sort of a someone he’s… gathering information from. And so, I was like, ‘Yeah, you don’t wanna do it this way. Here’s all the traps that you’re going to find yourself in. Don’t do this; don’t do that. ‘Give your actor a lot of takes. Don’t—don’t just give ‘em short shrift because you can fix it in post – you’re gonna screw yourself. You need to get it on set while the other actors are there, or else you’re going to be struggling to make up the performance in post, and then you’re screwed.’ It was really not the conversation I would’ve had if I had thought I was being considered. And then he asked me to audition, I auditioned, I put an audition on tape I recorded it at home with my wife, it was real.”

This Role cam with a lot of Demands physically and well Alan’s charachter was litteraly on fire….litterally

“I caught on fire! We were in the trenches, literally.There was a battle going on, and they had explosions, and I’m wearing my skintight pajamas and there are pots of just… explosions, and people are ducking down, and I’m—suddenly my back gets hot. I think, ‘Oh, ow—ow—ow I’m on fire’ and it was a—it was like a—just a spark hit it and then just spread out. It was very flammable. I didn’t realize it.

Mads: “They weren’t aware”

Alan: “They were not aware.”

Mads: “Sue them”

and everyone began to laugh for a bit…

Alan:”I don’t think I could go up against their lawyers and really… do very well. But then I wore a fire retardant undershirts after that.

Because Droids are such an important part of Star Wars Alan said he felt some pressure making his character unique. He was a bit worried he was going to be a Jar Jar Binks,and he did his best to make sure he wasn’t “that kind of character”

Was there a specific location that was challenging?

Mads: “Yeah, all of them, basically. I mean—something funny and interesting happened though. We went to Iceland for a week, we shot there, so that was my debut on the film, and my very first scene, I’m walking and walking and I’m meeting Krennic, uh, but after five hours of walking alone,the actors and the storm troopers turn up and then I realize, ‘Whoa, I’m in a Star Wars film, because obviously I’ve been walking for a long time and it’s not every day you see storm troopers…”

“However It was raining constantly.It was just pouring down. It was windy, chilly, and I was like, ‘God, we’re done here’ but it was such a beautiful place. I love Iceland. And we’re going back to the studio, but they came up with this brilliant idea all the shots inside in the studio should be… in rain. So I basically… I am wet the whole film. Those were cold and long days, but yeah. It’s worth it. It looks fantastic on film.”

Alan: ” They have a—a soundstage where it rains… inside. It’s amazing.My character luckily, doesn’t need it. We have a rainy day in the spaceship everybody goes out and I go, ‘See ya!’ I’m gonna stay in here. Yeah. ”

Mads & Alan talked about Villains and well Mad’s has played a lot of them. Alan Said he didn’t really care what Villain you play as long as it’s done with Humor. In this film Mads isn’t the Villain and says how Ben does a fantastic job at being a villain in this movie.

Mads: “You have to be a really nice person to play a good villain.”Rog

Alan:”That’s why I had trouble.”

It was so much fun sitting down with these two! They really had us laughing the whole interview.