Adam Driver gets honest about Kylo Ren in ‘Star Wars’
In Star Wars, Adam Driver played the conflicted Kylo Ren, who became an antihero after the trilogy ended. However, the actor revealed that was not the case initially.
Appearing on The Rich Eisen Show, the Marriage Story star revealed that his character was supposed to become darker at the end instead of reborn as Ben Solo.
“J.J. Abrams walked me through what he wanted to do with the character, but you had to sign up and be like, ‘I’m gonna do it,’ and once I did that, I went to London to star for pre-production,” he added. “And it’s like, ‘there’s a tiny room down the hall, you can go in there and read the script.’ And so I was reading it for the first time.”
The 40-year-old continued, “I had an overall arc that in mind that [JJ Abrams] wanted to do,” adding, “His idea was that [Kylo’s] journey was the opposite journey of Vader, where Vader starts the most confident and the most committed to the dark side. And then by the last movie, he’s the most vulnerable and weak. He wanted to start with the opposite.”
“This character was the most confused and vulnerable, and by the end of the three movies, he would be the most committed to the dark side. I tried to keep that arc in mind, regardless if that wound up not being the journey anyway, because it changed while shooting. But I was still focused on that,” the San Diego native shared.
Adam pointed to director Rian Johnson, who changed his character’s arc, “The last one, it changed into being, you know, about them and the dyad, and things like that,” he said.
Adding, “And evolving into Ben Solo. That was never a part of it. He was Ben Solo from the beginning, but there was never a version where we’d see Ben Solo when I first signed up for it.”
It is pertinent to mention that Adam won multiple laurels for portraying Kylo Ren in Star Wars, including the MTV Movie and Teen Choice awards.