Spoilers follow for the first season of The Acolyte through the finale episode, which premiered on Disney+ on July 16.Â
His name isn’t actually Qimir. It also isn’t Tyler Durden, but the Stranger, Manny Jacinto’s baddie with the body on The Acolyte, was conceived by series creator, producer, writer, and director Leslye Headland as sharing a fair amount of DNA with Fight Club’s anarchist icon. David Fincher’s R-rated cult classic may seem like an unexpected reference point for a live-action Star Wars series. If Tyler is a manifestation of the status-quo-bucking, mayhem-spreading id inside all of us, though, then the Stranger embodies that ideology as filtered through an anti-Jedi lens. And in The Acolyte, Jacinto brings him to magnetic and compelling life with a performance that is measured, sinister, and seductive and culminates in the Stranger successfully swaying his onetime enemy, Osha (Amandla Stenberg, playing both Osha and her twin, Mae), to his side.
“There was a version that we filmed where Osha and the Stranger actually kiss. But we felt that it may have not been too earned at that moment. I think it was just too early on,†Jacinto says of the pair’s final scene of the season. “The Stranger killed a bunch of her friends, and she just killed her fatherlike figure. For them to have this sensual moment just didn’t feel like it was appropriate. It’s just on the cutting-room floor. But I suggested, ‘Maybe not the kiss, but how about a hand-hold?’â€
That little caress reverberated through the fandom as much as Jacinto’s physique reveal in the fifth episode, “Night,†the explosively thirsty reaction to which he’s somewhat uncomfortable talking about. Jacinto is appreciative of the fan edits and fan art. But he’d also like his performance of the Sith with an understandable desire for freedom to be remembered for more than his arms — and to continue in a potential second season; the series hasn’t yet been renewed. “There’s a slight moment — you can see it in his face. We were trying to tap into a feeling of being caught by your father or your mother having done something wrong,†Jacinto says of the Stranger’s glimmer of frailty in the season finale. “I would love to explore more of that shame and vulnerability and fear.â€
My colleague Jackson McHenry spoke with Leslye, and she talked about how much she loves Fight Club and how she saw your character as a sort of Tyler Durden. In episode six, you have a line about losing everything and becoming free, which is very similar to something Tyler says. How much did you all look to Fight Club for inspiration?
Before the cast and crew went to Madeira, where we shot episode six, Amandla and I watched Fight Club to home in on Tyler’s philosophy of being free and his motivations. Another ode to Fight Club is that one of the last images of the finale is me and Osha holding hands, looking out to the water, and that’s the exact same image of Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter looking at the skyscrapers and everything just blowing to bits. We definitely pulled a lot from the Tyler Durden philosophy for the Stranger and his essence of “This is what it is. This is who I am. I shouldn’t have to — and I’m not going to — apologize for it.â€
Had you seen Fight Club before?Â
Yes, I definitely watched it a long time ago. And you also can’t help but see a random Brad Pitt shirtless photo on any social media. It’ll come up every once in a while. I joke that every role that I take, I try and figure out how my body’s going to look based on a Brad Pitt movie. I was like, I think the Stranger needs Brad Pitt’s body in Troy. I need to figure out what his workout was for that.
I wanted to ask you about the Stranger’s look, so let’s get into it. Let’s start with his hair: How did this longer length come about?Â
The long hair just felt appropriate, especially with the first iteration of the character, where he’s trying to hide. You can’t really see his true expression because it’s being hidden behind this mop of hair. In episode six, the hair is pushed back, and you can really see his face in all its vulnerability. A big inspiration we had was Toshiro Mifune. I need to show this picture to you, because it was plastered on the makeup chair and I just would look at this image. Leslye actually showed me this. [Holds up his cell phone and a picture of Mifune in the 1947 film Snow Trail.] Wet, oily — there’s this bang. It’s just dark and sexy and mysterious.
Where did the sleevelessness come from?Â
For the Qimir costume, I talked to Jennifer Bryan, our head costume designer. She showed me images of different types of costumes that we could use where Qimir, in the first iteration of the character, showed his bare arms. I was like, “I don’t think we should do that. I would like to be as covered up as possible, because arms. Because of hashtag arms.†And then when we saw the costume for the Stranger with the mask, and we had a version of him sleeveless, I was like, “Okay, we can use this one now because it fits the character. We’re not really hiding him anymore.†But I definitely am for less arms, as opposed to more arms.
Why would you prefer that?
I don’t have to work out as much. It’s such a funny thing with my team where if I get a role where I don’t have to show any skin, I’m, like, ecstatic because I don’t have to work out or worry about the physicality or the aesthetic appeal of the character. I get to keep my shirt on; it’s like a secret win for me. But it felt appropriate to have the arms out when the Stranger was unmasked.
Is there tension for you when I bring up the fact that the show has really inspired that thirsty arms reaction?
You can’t help but feel a little anxious about it — but also flattered and also really weird about it. I think where it stems from is that it’s hard for me to take a compliment, especially about how I look. Definitely working on it through therapy. It’s very nice to hear, but hopefully not the only thing that people will remember me for at the end of the day.
He has arms, but also he’s saying things that are really philosophically compelling. He personifies the seductiveness of the dark side, and you’ve talked about working with Leslye to make the character uncanny. How did you balance those two demands, persuasive but uncomfortable to watch, in your performance?Â
I saw him as three different iterations, a trinity of characters. Initially you have Qimir the apothecary, the potion-maker, and I drew a lot of inspiration from Jack Sparrow and Johnny Depp’s movements and his quirkiness. Then you go into the masked Stranger, and that’s where the uncanny really was honed. Him coming down, when you first see him, we filmed that in reverse so that it felt even more unnatural. We wanted to make sure that people didn’t really know whether he was human, a type of alien, even a droid or robot. In the fight sequences, you’ll see him disappear; there’s a shot I love that’s just a glimpse of his face while Mae is running. And then there is the final iteration of the character, where you see him in full effect in episode six, and that’s where I really homed in on the Tyler Durden aspect of his personality. There’s something about someone who’s so confident and so authentically himself that people are just automatically drawn to it. Osha herself has had to please either her mom or the Jedi. She hasn’t really been able to just be who she wanted to be, and the Stranger offers a glimpse of that with his philosophies of “Why are you trying to be a part of a society that doesn’t accept you for who you are?†That really helped with the appeal in episode six — along with the bath and the showing of skin. [Laughs.]
When you’re leaving that bathing scene carrying your huge duffel bag, you look so unbothered in your movement. How did you decide the way that he would sound, the way he would move, through those iterations of the character?Â
We were set up to succeed because Leslye supplied us with a movement coach and dialect coaches. I was able to, through trial and error, figure out how he would speak. I have a different voice for all different iterations of the character, and I played around with different ways to modify my voice: a higher register or a lower register, or having a lot of tension, or being more relaxed. A more anxious character automatically has a higher register, and that’s where I fell with Qimir. He’s masking himself as a drunk, so there’s still a slurry-ness to it. And there’s also this playfulness — I think the playfulness is what I kept throughout all these characters. It was easy for the masked Stranger because I had the voice modulation. When I got to the Stranger, that Tyler Durden character, it was more dropped in. I had to make sure I was more relaxed, because if I felt anxious, then it would change my voice a little bit. And that helped with the physicalization of the character, because I was relaxed.
There’s a line delivery of yours that I really love in episode five when you and Sol are facing off after you’ve killed Jecki. Sol says, “She was a child,†and you say, “You brought her here.†That feels to me like the entire thesis of this show: “You as Jedi are making these choices, and you want me to feel bad for reacting to your choices.†What did you want to convey in that line?Â
I had to truly believe in what I was saying: my philosophy that the Jedi aren’t what everybody thinks they are. I had to hold on to that anger so that when I said, “You brought her here,†or “The Jedi say I can’t exist,†these are all coming from a place of desperation. It comes from a place of passion: For some reason, you’re telling me that I can’t be who I am. Yet you’re doing all these bad things. I’m just calling you out on your wrongdoings.
Was the dismissive shrug during “You brought her here†always part of it?Â
That was the most natural choice. That was one of the first choices when I first said that line or even when I first read that line.
You’ve talked about Leslye workshopping scenes with you and Amandla and how that felt like you were really contributing to the Stranger’s arc. Is there something you suggested you’re particularly proud of?Â
There’s been so many small moments, but the scene where we first meet Qimir in the apothecary and then Mae hands him the bunta and then he starts making a drink. There were so many story beats and pieces of exposition that we needed to execute in that scene alongside getting to know the characters and their motivations — but, also, not just making it about exposition. We had to do it in a very playful way. Through our rehearsals, we came up with the idea that he would be making a drink, and you think that he’s making a drink for himself, but it’s actually him appeasing Mae’s wishes and making the poison. We were in Leslye’s office, and Leslye said, “And Mae says this.†And then she comes up to me: “And then Qimir would say,†and she points to me. And I’m like, Oh! You want me to come up with something. Then I started just rattling things off, and I said, “Well, then he starts making the drink.†She started through that little idea: “He starts saying this monologue as he’s making the drink, and it’s masked within this beautiful choreography of making a poison.†You get glimpses of the fact that Qimir’s a bit of a goof, but there’s this underlying sense of darkness to him because he’s willing to make the poison. That came out of us kind of workshopping that scene together.
On top of that, I suggested me being hung upside down, as opposed to Mae being trapped in the net, in episode five, and the last one that I haven’t talked to many people about was in the finale, where Qimir touches Osha’s hand with the lightsaber. I remember suggesting that moment and Leslye being like, “Yeah! Let’s try that.†And then she kept it. That’s the beauty of Leslye being such a great collaborator.
You said you suggested the finger touch. What was the scene before your suggestion?Â
Um … I haven’t told this to anybody. But there was a version where … oh God, I don’t know if I’m gonna … Okay, I’m just going to put it out there. There was a version that we filmed where Osha and the Stranger actually kiss. But we felt that it may have not been too earned at that moment. I think it was just too early on. The Stranger killed a bunch of her friends, and she just killed her fatherlike figure. For them to have this sensual moment just didn’t feel like it was appropriate. It’s just on the cutting-room floor. But I suggested, “Maybe not the kiss, but how about a hand-hold?†Some sort of wanting to console, some sort of physicality that expresses that he cares for her and feels for her and that they’re in this together now. That’s something that, if we do a season two, maybe we can work toward, if the fans want it.
What I love about that scene is you two are at a certain amount of distance from each other and then you take a step closer to her and touch her finger. That was such an economical way of conveying what you just described: They’re aligned now.Â
In episode six, we never wanted it to feel like Osha was trapped, like she was there unwillingly. I even say, “If you want to leave, just wait until the tide goes down and you can go.†We were always mindful that this was never a prisoner-type situation. Even Osha putting on the mask: There was a version of it where I put the mask on her or I present the mask to her. But through rehearsal, we found that it was so much more powerful if she was the one who was drawn to the mask and made the choice herself. She was being seduced, but a majority of these decisions were made through her own volition.
The last episode has this astonishing fight scene between you and Lee Jung-jae’s Sol where you’re on the offensive for a lot of the fight. I know you trained for the episode-five fight for four months. It looks like there’s a lot of wirework involved in this episode-eight fight. How did that come together?
With the wirework, it’s something production doesn’t necessarily want me to do for insurance reasons, so I wasn’t able to do that aspect of it. But that final battle wasn’t there in the first iteration of episode eight. I was actually supposed to just be chilling back on the island, just seeing Osha be off and being like, “All right, see you later!â€
“I’ll be working on the soup until you get back!â€Â
Yeah, exactly, and it was her choice to come back to the island. But I think Leslye saw what we did with episode five and saw my screen test with the mask, and she was like, “We need more of him.†So we have this big final battle with JJ and I; I had those months of prep and training to get my body ready. It was a really stressful time because the writers strike was coming, so we really had to get moving quickly. It was a lot of pressure to get those scenes done.
The choreography in itself was, I truly believe, a character in this story. Our second-unit director and action designer, Christopher Cowan; our stunt team; and our stunt captain, Mark Ginther, really made sure that we had a completely different fighting style than the prequels or even in the original trilogy. I drew a lot of inspiration from Rurouni Kenshin, these Japanese live-action movies based on a manga. The swordplay they have in these movies is incredible, but also the props are very light. Our lightsabers, they had the lighting technology inside and all the electronics, so they were heavier and harder to maneuver. But we made it work, and I think we definitely brought a different fighting style that we’ve never seen in the Star Wars world. We took that risk, and I think it’s a risk that paid off.
You have a background in competitive hip-hop dance. Was there any aspect of the fight scenes that felt like an extension of that?Â
All of it. As a dancer, you rehearse and rehearse and rehearse so that when you do it onstage, you don’t have to think about it anymore. That aspect helped me a lot, because when I had to perform, I couldn’t really see or hear because of the mask. I rehearsed the stunt sequences day in and day out, so I could do it in my sleep. I didn’t have to worry about vision so much because I could rely on my muscle memory to get me through the choreography. All of those fight sequences, I’m so incredibly proud of being able to take them on. The five-person sequence in the forest is definitely the one thing I’m really, really proud of because I wasn’t just fighting the helmet and the cloak — I was fighting the trees and branches around me alongside the five other Jedi.
You’ve talked about Asian representation onscreen and wanting to add more characters who are complicated, who are nuanced, who have contradictions and tension within them. The Stranger and Sol both fit the bill there. Did you and JJ ever talk about that?Â
No, we never really got into it. I mean, JJ was busy trying to act for the first time in English, so I didn’t want to bog him down too much about the deeper meaning of what he’s actually doing and what it means for younger Asian Americans. I think it’s different because, you know, he comes from South Korea.
And it’s a completely different sort of experience, yeah.
Not to say that he hasn’t struggled with that. But I think to him, it’s just, “Yeah, of course Asian males are seen as desirable. Of course they’re leading projects.†Whereas when I first heard JJ’s casting through Zoom, I remember being hit emotionally to the point where I could cry, because you have not only two Asian male leads but also Asian male leads in a massive franchise like Star Wars. It’s not just a little independent feature. It’s a huge IP that’s been around for decades. It really hit me.
We’re waiting to learn if the show is going to be renewed. Are there emotions or aspects of the Stranger that you would want to explore in a second season?
You see a little glimpse of it in the finale when Vernestra feels his presence and says “You!†and then the Stranger clocks that she’s here and then he puts his mask on. There’s a slight moment — you can see it in his face. We were trying to tap into a feeling of being caught by your father or your mother having done something wrong. I would love to explore more of that shame and vulnerability and fear in the next season. There’s a lot we can tap into in terms of why he felt that way, the origins of why he became who he is, and why he’s become this darker entity.