Interview: Author Mary Beth Ellis, Part 1

“Mando is portrayed by America. He’s a Brazilian athlete-artist, a Chilean immigrant, a native Southerner, and a descendant of the American form of royalty. No wonder we love him. He’s us. We love us!”

Mary Beth writes the most beautiful and funny essays about Star Wars and she recently wrote a new favorite of mine about Brendan Wayne, who partially plays Din in The Mandalorian. As a Star Wars fan myself, it’s so easy to be in conversation with her about our favorite bounty hunter that our chat went on for a while, so I am going to divide this into sections. Here is Part 1.

UPDATE: **PART 2 NOW POSTED HERE**

Q: When I asked you what captivated you about the creation of Din Djarin, you answered, “It’s the best example (I’ve) seen of artistic collaboration in every possible aspect of character development.”

MBE: And the man is in a helmet 98% of the time. Favreau cranked up the difficulty to Harder Than Hard Mode because using only human faces was too easy, I guess.

Mando is portrayed by America. He’s a Brazilian athlete-artist, a Chilean immigrant, a native Southerner, and a descendant of the American form of royalty. No wonder we love him. He’s us. We love us!

Q: He’s so badass, but really endearing at the same time.

MBE: Here’s what I’d like explained: Disney is leaning forward on inclusivity, and that’s fine, but they forgot somebody. They’re completely ignoring Mando as the most inclusive human character in the history of pretty much anything. They’re not presenting him in that way at all, and I cannot understand why.

Because of the mask and armor, it’s easy to self-project with him. Anyone, no matter who they are or where they’re from, can slip into the character.

And that’s reflective of the Mandalorians, who accept anyone with a pulse and sentience into the tribe as long as they’re willing to swear the Creed. I felt acquainted with this; that’s how my own spiritual home works. Mandalorians share that with the Jedi: No craps given about where you came from or what you look like or anything. It’s not a race, it’s a creed.

So The Manadalorian truly is a global show and a family show. That’s its secret ingredient. I mean, you can’t ignore the Baby Yoda factor, but — a whole family can watch it for different reasons but still talk about it at the dinner table. The mom wants her semi-alone time with Pedro Pascal. The dad is staring at the blasters akimbo. And the kids get explosions. And they can all adhere to the story.

Q: But how did they achieve that with Mando in the physical sense?

First, we cannot forget the importance of another body double, Barry Lowin, and stunt double Lateef Crowder dos Santos. Like I said in the article, Din Djarin is such a masterpiece of masculinity that it takes more than one man to form him– or even two.

Do yourself a favor and Google Image these guys. That’s what they’re not showing us. They’re all three of them heartstoppers, and handsome in completely different ways. I’ve had women say to me that they’re disappointed to learn it’s not Pedro always in the suit, and I tell them to look up who is. Then they come back with, “Oh, well that’s all right then, I’ll take one of each.”

But the showrunners understood that if all Mando brings is raging sex appeal, the magic eventually disintegrates as much as if he came off like a douche canoe in his movements. Then he’s just Fabio with an awesome rifle and no one takes him seriously as a mythic hero.

Q: It really is a group thing, and the costume made that possible. And having a character in a helmet isn’t new with Star Wars, so it’s not like it was completely alien.

MBE: But I don’t think there’s been anything like this situation in media before, this kind of collaboration on a human character in such a culturally significant franchise. There’s Vader and Boba Fett from the OT, but they had surprisingly little screen time — they weren’t on board for just about every scene the way Mando is. They showed up, looked ominous, killed people and broke things, and left.

And Din Djarin didn’t need to just create a sensational impression. He had to carry the whole smash — and as a protagonist, not an antagonist. The story structure called for the audience to love him, not love to hate him.

What we saw from this whole team emphasizes how physical action and dialogue must work together for a character to play not just convincingly, but in a way that liquifies the human heart. The result was this instantly iconic character who serves as a model of moral and physical valiance, a drop-dead romantic ideal, and the exemplification of positive human traits.

Q: Some influencers and media kind of blow past Brendan Wayne’s contributions by saying he does the shooting and gives Din his swagger, but your piece points out there’s more to it than that.

MBE: And it ignores the contributions of the other doubles. If all Brendan Wayne gave Mando was swagger — and yes, Pedro was on set and part of figuring all that out — you and I are not having this conversation. The whole thing falters at the gate.

Q: You said it is a “master class for acting from both Brendan Wayne and Pedro Pascal, who in essence had to switch places.” Could you say more about that?

MBE: The entertainment media is right to express admiration over the fact that Pedro Pascal has no children, and yet compellingly plays a caring dad. I don’t think I can say more about the tremendous vocal and physical performances from Pedro that hasn’t already been said. He’s the Clark Gable of Gen X. He just is. I would watch hours of Pedro Pascal watching paint dry.

Here’s what I’m saying though: Remember that initially, Mando pushes Baby away, first as an instinct, then as a defense mechanism against his own trauma, and finally to avoid convicting himself of a great moral wrong. This shut-down manner of Mando’s, when we first met him, was crucial. Crucial. And the man with the initial responsibility for establishing it was asked to turn his own experiences inside out. All without saying a word.

But no one’s really talking about the fact that Brendan Wayne had to convey the inverse of what I suspect is a dearly held part of who he is — a tender father, a genuinely warm person. I think he harbors a soft spot for kids in general. And here he needed to be ice-cold.

Q: The hardcore fans knew at least some of what was going on, and it’s good to see them in the credits and getting more attention in general.

MBE: I think that’s a function of people not understanding what these guys actually do. And technically I’m in that category, I had no idea either until I saw Mando’s roots in Arthurian literature as well as the samurai, the cowboy. I studied Arthurian literature, and of then there’s of course the spiritual element. So he already has my attention.

Most of all, it’s Star Wars, and I was emotionally attached because it brought me back home to this galaxy. So I wanted to learn everything I could and then I discovered these astonishing people involved with bringing Din to life. They’re all stories on their own. And there’s still so much I don’t know. I have so many questions! I’m probably getting all kinds of stuff wrong in this interview by accident but —

Q: The body double work isn’t something most people think about or even notice.

MBE: And that’s because everyone has done their jobs and the illusion of one man works.

People seem to think that what Brendan and Barry did was put on the helmet and stand there, or Lateef just agrees to fall from great heights so Pedro Pascal doesn’t add a scar to his beautiful face. It’s not that at all, and the general public isn’t paying attention to fan-friendly media to have an opportunity to learn about it. And in the same way, there’s very little appreciation of how much work goes into Pedro’s vocal performances.

It reminds me of how some misunderstand the duties of a first baseman. He doesn’t only pay attention when there’s a line drive or someone’s trying to steal second. No, fam, listen to Joey Votto when he’s miked up. It’s every pitch. He’s paying attention. He has to remain immersed in each movement on the diamond to do his job properly.

Too few people are thinking of Brendan Wayne as an actor, and that also goes for Lateef and Barry.

Q: They all communicated that Mando was shut down, and then a believable loving dad.

MBE: Brendan Wayne just downright knows how to hold a baby. That sounds simple but it’s truly important in Mando’s development in the first season. It’s impossible to fake; it’s a natural, instinctive action formed through hour upon hour of holding onto some kid in all possible conditions and stages of toddlerhood. Simultaneously confident and gentle.

He doesn’t necessarily ping me as a method guy, but maybe his experience of being a father– not just a father but a dad–paved the way for how he settled into this role so well and provided this incredible texture. He was preparing for it all along and had no idea.

The family he was prepared to sacrifice the part for was actually nurturing his ability to nail it when the time came. As a nonfiction writer, I love that, it’s so beautiful. Yet another story I couldn’t make up myself.

Q: This reminds me of the comments you made when Luke Skywalker showed up in 2, with the voice dubbing technology — how you said that every previous Star Wars film, every interview, every whatever Mark Hamill had done up to that point turned out to be building towards that one performance.

MBE: Yes, hearing how that audio was done was tremendously moving for me as a longtime Star Wars fan. Ahhhhh, I’m gonna cry again.

Anyway, my husband (Josh) is an admirable uncle but he does not hold a baby with authority, with loving authority. But his identical twin brother– a dad of six– does.

Q: Wow.

It’s not just one gesture or moment… but you could see, when they went on the run, that Mando was no longer holding Grogu like a sack of potatoes, as my mom would say. He has to do some figuring out about it — he totes the baby around in a cargo bag, which is heartwarming. It’s a touching detail for Mando because you can tell he was just using whatever he could scrounge up on the Razor Crest. But he is never, ever, ever letting him go.

I said to Josh sometime in mid-Season 1, “That’s a man who’s walked a baby around a hallway at 3 AM, and the kid won’t stop screaming and everybody’s exhausted.” I had no idea about who the cast was or anything — you know I was out of Star Wars for a time, out of the loop —but I understood that whoever was mostly portraying Mando with the baby wasn’t just a biological father. He was a dad down for the fight that is raising a child.

That quality is not something I would have picked up on before I became an aunt and had some gritty bonding time– not just holding the kid for two seconds on my lap for Christmas pictures, but cleaning up puke, putting on socks, calming a tantrum. It’s nothing close to what parents do, but it was enough to know that parenting is really, really hard — and a job you can’t quit.

And there are probably many other nuances Brendan Wayne salted into his scenes while physically interactive with Grogu, even if unconsciously, and I’m missing it. I can’t recognize them, because for all my aunting, I don’t know what it’s like to have a child of my own.

Q: The authentic feel began in the first moments of the pilot.

MBE: People, and the Star Wars community in particular, don’t fully appreciate what a miracle of creative synergy Din Djarin was from the instant you press play on the pilot. Because Star Wars fans are spoiled for miracles. But if the people behind Mando don’t nail him in the first sixty seconds, the whole character, the whole series, comes crashing down.

So after all these hugely gifted BTS artists — props and creatures and costuming and so on — did their jobs, it was down to the actors. No CGI on the planet can paper over a crap performance. We learned that in the prequels.

Q: It’s a show that felt real. The sequels had this weird vibe that they were — I don’t know, like corporate fan fiction?

MBE: The showrunners honored the right goals. They respected the legacy, they respected the character, even though Mando is new to us.

Filoni and Favreau did something very simple: They went back to the major prime source of Star Wars, the Western, instead of trying to make a copy of Star Wars. You know what happens when you try to make a copy of a copy.

And Westerns are always extremely physical. No one’s sitting on bean bags talking about their feelings, but they can be every molecule as emotionally complex as a straight-up drama.

Q: The physicality was there from that initial scene.

MBE: I should say again that Pedro Pascal was on set and working this stuff out with these guys as well. That man can move; he did at least part of his own fighting on Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

But if the audience is turned off right away, we can’t appreciate the artistry of everyone else. And no matter how much even the likes of Pedro Pascal flings himself into the vocal part of it, if he’s providing this captivating voice while the leading man looks like a dipshit, what happened with The Mandalorian doesn’t happen. It can’t. Brendan and Lateef were madly shoveling the snow off the driveway so the rest of the parade could get out of the garage.

A lot of little details points to how vital and different Mando’s physicality was going to be. It’s a strong foundation that’s immediately laid. Notice that in the first moments of the pilot, we’re not suspended in space like in the film openings. We’re literally grounded. We see his form and the cape and we know this is somebody whose movement is going to play a role here.

They were smart enough to have the grandson of John Wayne come in out of a hostile landscape all by his lonesome, stand in the doorway for a second to take command of the place, and shoot from the hip — but only after the antagonists came for him with a weapon.

The non-humans were the aggressors; they’re taller than Mando, they’re kinda shoving him around. It wasn’t the taunting, it was the knife on the beskar, the attack on the embodiment of his identity as a Mandalorian, that fired up the actual altercation.

Q: But you have to zoom out on your perspective of what’s happening to see that.

MBE: It’s the kind of thing you only pick up after the eighty-seven millionth viewing or so. And you do notice it; you just don’t realize you’re noticing it.

And that part of the scene demanded restraint on Din’s part. The real story there was that our man wasn’t losing his temper. The fight looked wild, but Mando was in control the entire time. When he finishes off the last guy with the door, the scene cuts to him filling the center of the frame with his weight distributed and the blaster still at the ready.

Not a trace of panic. He just wants to know who else wants to try him. And when he sees there isn’t anybody, the weapon is holstered. Now everyone is being reasonable; now he can speak; now he can do job that he came to do. He just moves on.

Q: I have heard so many people say they knew could trust this series from the start because of how well that beginning was done.

MBE: And they hadn’t even added in Pedro’s voice yet! And yeah, that phrase, “could trust the series.” Even from the prequels, so many people had lost their trust in Star Wars. But here, everybody involved handled Mando with care, with respect. That is why grown men were weeping.

That is why that scene better stay exactly as Mando plays his part for as long as we have moving images.

Yes, that’s only Part One! I told you, this lady can talk some Star Wars! See you next post!