Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Disney+) – “We were like kids in a candy store”

Watts We never sat down and said: “These are the films from the 1980s that we want to reference.” We grew up with these films, so we didn't even need to talk about them: they were already in our DNA. I've always tried to go back, not necessarily to a specific film reference, but more simply to what I felt as a child. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and my friends and I often went for walks with this desire for adventure, and a little fear of finding it. That was kind of the biggest influence for me.

Ford We really watched Star Wars and those movies growing up. It was a great time for movies about kids our age.

Watts It's fun because initially you're writing archetypal children and you have an idea of ​​what they're going to look like. But when you start casting, you have to get rid of a lot of that. We've seen a lot of great young actors, but ultimately you're just waiting for the kid who really embodies the spirit of the character to come into the room. Because you don't choose a child to play a role, but rather a child for who he is.

Ford When you're writing a character that has some complexity and scope, that has to be both charming and all of those things, you're really hoping to get Jude Law.

Watts Jude is amazing. He looked like he was already in Star Wars, and we just brought him back into it somehow. It fits so perfectly into the Star Wars universe that we were very lucky to have it.

Watts Creatively, it's always a challenge. The responsibility of creating something in the Star Wars universe is a weight you feel. But we were surrounded by an incredible team and felt truly supported every step of the way.

Ford Oddly enough, the challenge was that we were given incredible options for everything we could think of and we had to say no for the sake of our story, instead of getting lost in the incredible possibilities.

Watts Yes, like when Doug Chang and the team at Lucasfilm presented us with hundreds of incredible aliens to put into our series, but we could only choose 10. Those were the kinds of tough creative decisions we had to make . We were like kids in a candy store.

Watts I realized that I really enjoyed watching other directors direct.

Ford For my part, I learned that creating something of this scale is a marathon. You need to conserve your creative energy as much as you need to spend it each day. And just like the kids in the show, actually being separated from my own family for all that time, it made me appreciate my normal life a lot more.