Skeleton Crew co-creators Jon Watts and Christopher Ford cannot believe they got two Oscar-nominated actors to lead their Star Wars show.
The pair, who also double as writers and executive producers for the new Disney+ series, share their disbelief over Jude Law and Kerry Condon’s involvement in “Skeleton Crew.”
“We’re so fortunate to have such great actors on the show,” Watts told Decider during a recent sit-down interview. “I mean, Jude especially. He’s in it so much and he’s with the kids so much.”
The standalone Star Wars series follows a group of children who wind up lost in the galaxy and desperately searching for a way home. Condon — who scored her Academy Award nod for 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin — plays Fara, the mother of one of the children who are traversing the stars. Law plays Jod Na Nawood, a mysterious Force-sensitive human who takes the kids under his wing and promises to help them return to their parents… even if he has no clue how to do that.
According to Watts and Ford, filling the role of Jod required finding an actor with talent and an affinity for nurturing a new generation, a tall order for any on-screen player. Add in the fact that you have an established fanbase with opinionated members and you have an impossible job listing. Thankfully, the co-creators told Decider that Law measured up.
“It was such an incredible relief to get him because not only is he a huge Star Wars fan, he’s an incredible actor,” Watts added of the British actor who scored an Oscar nom for The Talented Mr. Ripley. “He’s also just great with kids.”
Not only did The Holiday star excitedly join the project and toss himself into the deep end with the eight-episode show, he made sure that his younger co-stars were on par. While Law told Decider that he tries not to give the younger actors advice — a rule he follows with his own son, Raff — he did share that he was always ready on set to use “the actor Force” to guide them.
Ford and Watts said that even without outright advice or direction, Law’s influence was felt by the four kids who play the plundering pilots of a rogue spaceship lost in a galaxy far, far away.
“The kids were kind of in like the Jude Law acting school with him,” Ford joked.
“He would do theater games with them, he would make sure they were hitting their marks, you know, help them pick up their cues, remember their lines,” added Watts.
Watts continued, “Having Jude was sort of like having a co-director with us to be in there making sure it’s great.”
Not that the show needed any additional support in the directing field. Watts — who previously helmed the three Sony and Marvel Spider-Man films starring Tom Holland — steps behind the camera for Skeleton Crew alongside a list of accomplished filmmakers including Lee Isaac Chung (Twisters, Minari), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All At Once), and Jake Schreier (Beef, Thunderbolts).
At the end of the day, the co-creators shared that they found their young stars — Robert Timothy Smith, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Kyriana Kratter, and Ravi Cabot-Conyers — to be entirely competent and professional day in and day out. The creatives joked that between the script, the practical sets, and the genuine chemistry between the kids and Law, directors may have been superfluous entirely.
“We didn’t need to tell them anything. We just wanted to set it up for them so that it would be really fun,” Ford explained of creating the atmosphere of play.
Ford added, “The funny thing is the kids were in school the whole time we were shooting. So that meant that whenever they were coming to be on our set, that was like recess.”
The first two episodes of Skeleton Crew debut on Disney+ December 2. New episodes release weekly on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
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