Talking to TheWrap.com, Leslye Headland has shared her thoughts regarding the cancellation of The Acolyte, “I was not surprised by… I think I was surprised at the swiftness of it and the publicness of it,” she said. “I was surprised by how it was handled.”
There was a lot of unfair vitriol about “The Acolyte” online, and for it to be the first “Star Wars” show to be publicly canceled – Lucasfilm had never done that.
Really the whole thing with “The Acolyte” was always a major risk. It was a new part of the timeline. It was all new characters. It was a part of the lore where you couldn’t use a Storm Trooper, you didn’t have the reference of the politics and war that Tony Gilroy has brilliantly exploited in such a genius way in “Andor.” But all that iconography and all those visual references are original trilogy references, and our references were the High Republic novels and the publishing initiative and then the prequels, specifically with the lightsabers.
I also think that any gripes creatively with the show are completely valid. That’s people’s reaction. It’s usually their reaction to their own reaction. But like I said the show was always a risk. It’s the old adage of the first one through the wall is the bloodiest. And this is very similar to coming back to your question about the company, it was just very much, “Let’s shoot for the sky.” Let’s just go for it. So I have no regrets, and I’m absolutely obsessed with “Star Wars.” I still am, and I love my show, and I know that it was wonderful. And honestly, the designers that worked on the show are more responsible for it — because of what “Star Wars” is, creating that world is honestly harder than creating the narrative and the dialogue and the characters, that stuff I’ve done. It’s more hiring the right people, and all of those people were brilliant.
What was the experience for you to see the show not only get attacked but weaponized by certain parts of the media?
I have thoughts about this, and I don’t want to go on a tangent, so I’ll stick to the personal rather than the professional. I was not online. However, I am a “Star Wars” fan, which means I have always been, since the launch of YouTube, part of the “Star Wars” recap/criticism/lionization fandom community. These guys I’ve known for years and years. So when I got the information from others about what the weather report was, there was this real concern from friends of mine or co-workers of mine that saddened me. I also was like, “I know who these guys are.” You don’t have to tell me who’s talking about it or how bad it is online, I know exactly who they are. I supported them on Patreon. There are some of them that I respect, and there are some of them that I think are absolutely snake oil salesmen, just opportunists. Then, of course, there are the fascists and racists. So it runs a gamut. It isn’t just one thing or the other. So I think that if you’re in part of the fandom, you understand the genre and the tone of particular channels and creators. So in some ways I wasn’t surprised, and then in other ways I was disappointed. I think you always do that when you create something, it’s just that “Star Wars” is on a massive level of visibility.
The content that is being put out by the streamers or the studios is being snatched up by these other creators, and so commentaries, synopses, live videos, all of the ways that these creators make money — through viewer-based ad revenues and their Patreons — there’s a lot of money to be made. And by the way, have at it. Get your coin 100%. But it revealed to me that there is a misunderstanding between the studios and that engagement. They think of it as fandom, and in ways it is, but studios use it almost like a focus group. It made me start to think, rather than these fans are toxic, or this thing is being mean to me, it made me think more that the content being made about “Star Wars” will ultimately be more culturally impactful than actual “Star Wars.” I believe we’re headed into that space. Those IPs will continue to make money, but I don’t know how much they will affect the next generation as much as the content that is being created around those events, IP films and television shows.
That is a proper business model rather than a bunch of mean people. It’s a lot more financial than I think people realize, and as somebody that really has supported a lot of those channels financially and with my eyeballs, some of that stuff is probably the only content that a younger generation is seeing.
Was the cancellation decision shocking to you? Did they explain why? Was it viewership or creative?
It was kind of both. I was not surprised by it. I think I was surprised at the swiftness of it and the publicness of it. I was surprised by how it was handled. But once I was getting particular phone calls about the reaction and the criticism and the viewership, I felt like “OK, the writing’s on the wall for sure.” The viewership was a little muddled for me, because — and this is my understanding — with “Star Wars,” you’re not just measured within the marketplace that you happen to be in at that time, you’re measured against every other “Star Wars” show. We hit the Nielsens a couple times, not every week or anything like that, but a couple times it poked through. I feel like for a launch of a first season show that was trying different things, I think it could have been worth it to allow the audience it was meant for to find it. But that wasn’t up to me. So I fully respect the decision, even if I’m sad about it.
Had you plotted much ahead in terms of Season 2?
My showrunner and I had a lot of ideas going into Season 1, so we definitely were thinking about that, specifically with Manny Jacinto’s character. We always knew that Lee-jung Jae was going to be the emotional anchor of the first season, watching the deterioration of that father figure. So we had already thought ahead and thought about what type of relationship we wanted to look at in the second season. We had talked about all of that from a thematic and character standpoint, but in terms of actual narrative, there were only a couple sign posts that we knew we wanted to hit.
Stream The Acolyte on Disney+ now.
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