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Thandiwe Newton SPEAKS OUT on her Star Wars character's death, calls it a 'big mistake'
Thandiwe Newton revealed she was disappointed by how things played out for her character in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Scroll to know what she said.
Thandiwe Newton is upset by the death of her character in Solo: A Star Wars Story, but not because she wants to return to the famous intergalactic series. Thandiwe played Val, an outlaw, and member of Tobias Beckett's gang who joined forces with Han Solo in the 2018 spinoff. However, Val, one of the franchise's first female Black protagonists, was murdered less than halfway through the film, which wasn't intended to happen.
The Westworld and Reminiscence actress revealed to Inverse that her role was originally intended to appear in the 2018 Han Solo stand-alone, which suffered a director change and significant reshooting before hitting cinemas. Newton claims that due to a tight shooting schedule, her character dies in a bridge explosion after detonating a bomb. “I felt disappointed by Star Wars that my character was killed,” Newton said of her character’s demise. “And, actually, in the script, she wasn’t killed. It happened during filming.”
"When we came to filming, as far as I was concerned and was aware, when it came to filming that scene, it was too huge a set-piece to create, so they just had me blow up and I’m done," Thandiwe explained.
However, the written conclusion would have allowed Newton's character to possibly appear again if called upon, but that option is no longer available, which upsets Newton, who termed the choice a mistake for one particular reason. “I remembered at the time thinking, ‘This is a big, big mistake’ — not because of me, not because I wanted to come back,” she said. “You don’t kill off the first Black woman to ever have a real role in a Star Wars movie. Like, are you f*** joking?" Meanwhile, The representation and treatment of Black characters in the Star Wars franchise has long been a source of contention, and recently, John Boyega addressed it as well.
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