One would imagine that going to an audition for a top-secret franchise film is difficult enough, but couple that with being confronted by a completely foreign terminology in your audition material and it must be doubly so. This is precisely what happened to Phoebe Waller-Bridge when she went to audition for
Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Waller-Bridge, who is said to be a standout in the film (and
The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson's surprise favorite), plays L3-37, Lando Calrissian's droid companion. This, of course, was not known to the
Broadchurch actress but it turns out that she also didn't know what a droid was. As she explained to
CinemaBlend.
"I was going to the audition and I thought, 'this character is amazing, she's a revolutionary, she's really cool', and the dialogue was amazing and it said, just in one of the stage directions, 'droid'. So I was like, 'Droid...droid...what's a droid?' And then I Googled a droid and then, nothing much really came up with the pictures, it wasn't explicitly a robot. I was in the taxi on the way to the audition and I was like, 'shit, I really should know what a droid is', and I was asking my taxi driver, he was like, 'I don't know what a droid is'. And he called his family, like 'what's a droid?'
While it's quite remarkable to think of someone not being familiar with what a droid is, it's important to note that Waller-Bridge has confessed to having no real knowledge of the Star Wars franchise, even revealing on The Graham Norton Show that she's not seen any of the films. Thankfully for her, however, this lack of knowledge didn't cripple her in the audition room and she managed to navigate the situation well. She continues:
"I got to the audition and thought 'I'm just going to play it like a human' because the chances are its a human. Because most of the time when you audition, it's for humans. So, I went in as a human and I did the audition. The guys were like 'Oh that's really great, thank you. Could you try it a bit more droid-y?' I was like 'what sort of droid-y vibe do you want?' Luckily one of the directors went like this [made robot arms], and I was like, that's a [frick]ing robot!!"
Solo: A Star Wars Story hits theatres on 25th May 2018.
What do you think? Can you believe Phoebe Waller-Bridge didn't know what a droid was? Are you looking forward to seeing L3-37 in action? Leave your thoughts below.