The First Star Wars Spinoff May Have Landed Its Lead, Get The Details

Insert "Clone Wars" joke here.

By Nick Venable | Updated 9 years ago

Sometimes it seems like the universe isn’t on our side, and other times it feels like we own it all. This is one of those latter instances, when things seem just a little too perfect. The latest news out of the Star Wars spinoff abyss is that Orphan Black‘s Tatiana Maslany, an actress whose name we’ve been praising for ages around here, has landed a lead role. And if we’re lucky, she’ll be playing at LEAST six characters throughout the film, she has the skills.

The rumorish news comes from Total Geeks, whose sources have kept up with them since Maslany’s name was first put into the hat. The Canadian actress was reportedly a frontrunner from the very beginning, due to Disney and Lucasfilm being impressed with her, and their latest report says that she was offered the role and snatched it up.

Now, of course, it’s too early to start any real celebrations about a Star Wars film being led by an amazing actress, but Orphan Black fans know that any time is good for a clone dance party!

There are no details on who Maslany would play—because Star Wars—but it’s apparently one of the lead roles. Which possibly throws a little dirt on our story earlier about Bob Iger possibly implying the first standalone film would center on characters from The Force Awakens. Obviously, she could end up being the main character surrounded by others that we see in J.J. Abrams’ film, but it’s hard to speculate while the only thing that’s official is the headache I’m getting.

Maslany recently had to drop out of an off-Broadway acting gig in Neil LaBute’s The Way We Get By, which would have been her debut. She stepped away due to scheduling conflicts, which probably had more to do with Orphan Black‘s Season 3 production running long, but an impending Star Wars spinoff shoot later this year would also be a huge obstacle in her stage goals.

It’s still a crying shame that Maslany has yet to win an Emmy for her work on Orphan Black, or even a SAG Award, but maybe starring in one of the biggest films of the next few years will launch her into the critical orbit that she should have already been commanding anyway. Remember when she was rumored to be playing Sarah Connor in Terminator: Genysis? Glad that never happened.

I love thinking about Maslany playing a part of the Fett family, who gets cloned to be the new kind of Stormtrooper, one who has different personalities. Like there’s the suburban mom Stormtrooper, and the really smart stoner Stormtrooper, and the weird freakish hilarious killer Stormtrooper. And now we wait for confirmation.

---