The Last Jedi’s Adam Driver talks terror, Kylo Ren’s mask and wonky lightsabers

THE Last Jedi star Adam Driver was wary of entering the Star Wars galaxy, but determined to make Kylo Ren a three-dimensional villain.

ADAM Driver admits he has a love-hate relationship with the mask of Star Wars alter-ego, Kylo Ren.

When the first film of the new trilogy, The Force Awakens, was released two years ago one of its most celebrated elements was Driver’s dark and tormented Ren and his striking mask, with its echoes of arguably the greatest movie villain of all time, Darth Vader.

Certainly Driver, until then best known for his Emmy-nominated supporting role in the HBO comedy drama Girls, used the imposing black grille to explore the ambiguity of his character, a Jedi gone bad.

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The Force Awakens revealed Ren to be Ben Solo, the son of the much loved original trilogy characters Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford). He trained in the Jedi arts under Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, before betraying him and killing his students, and turning to the Dark Side of the Force in the thrall of the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke. But even though he did some very nasty things — not least of which was bumping off his old man in the dramatic finale — there was a lingering questions of whether the tortured man in black was indeed all bad and was he constantly battling his better instincts.

“My costume was a testament to that,” says Driver. “The idea of someone hiding and why were they hiding and what was the image they were trying to project against who they actually are?”

Adam Driver says the mask helped him find the essence of Kylo Ren — but also tripped him up a whole lot.

But there was also a downside — sometimes that very same mask would make him look like, well, a bit of a goose.

“It’s also difficult to be intimidating to people on set when a shoelace takes you out because you can’t see very well,” he concedes with a chuckle.

Driver says he revelled in and could relate to the ambiguity of Ren, whose confused frame of mind often led to petulant outbursts with his slightly wonky, multi-pronged light sabre in the first film. He also enjoyed the fact that he, like everyone else in The Last Jedi, had no clue where new director Rian Johnson would take the character.

“I like that,” he says. “To me that makes playing it fun — it hopefully makes it a three-dimensional character. In the original trilogy, Darth Vader starts at a place that’s more resolute in what his mission is. In The Force Awakens, Kylo starts in more of an uneasy place that is echoed in everything that he does, even down to his light sabre, which is not quite right. You always get a sense that maybe it will break. That kind of unlevelness about him, I can relate to in life. I think we all probably can.”

Joining the Star Wars galaxy was a huge step up for Driver and he gives the impression that the bright glare of the spotlight the hugely successful franchise brought with it still doesn’t sit comfortably with him. At a recent press event in Tokyo, he bypassed the red carpet and in the various press conferences, his answers were mostly either flip or perfunctory. Certainly Driver’s journey to the top has been unconventional.

A former Marine, who joined the armed forces after the September 11 terror attacks, Driver trained at the prestigious Julliard Drama School and scored some supporting film roles before his big break as Lena Dunham’s boyfriend Adam in Girls, a role that brought him three successive Emmy nominations. Since then he has emerged as one of the finest and most versatile actors of his generation, working with directing greats such as Steven Spielberg (Lincoln), Martin Scorsese (Silence), Stephen Soderbergh (Logan Lucky) and Jim Jarmusch (Peterson), the Coen brothers (Inside Llewyn Davis) across comedy, indie dramas and even sci-fi.

Publicity shy Adam Driver at the world premiere of The Last Jedi in Los Angeles. Picture: Alex J. Berliner / ABImages

In person he’s warm but guarded, and with his imposing 1.89m frame and steely gaze, it’s easy to see why Star Wars producer Kathleen Kennedy and director JJ Abrams chose him for their trilogy, knowing he’d never be satisfied with playing a black and white, cookie-cutter, cartoon villain. Driver admits that, despite being a fan of the original films as a child, he was initially reticent about signing up for a such a huge franchise, wary of their tendency to place style and spectacle over substance. But when he came on board, he refused to accept that Kylo Ren was an out and out baddie, even arguing that the opposing forces in the Star Wars saga were both at fault and driven to extremes by their own beliefs.

He reveals that both Abrams and Johnson spoke a lot with him about terrorism, before hitting on a decision to play Ren as a radicalised extremist, a pertinent but touchy subject in this day and age.

“What I always liked about him, even from The Force Awakens, was thinking not of him as being evil but as feeling right,” says Driver. “And when people are feeling morally justified in a certain way, to me it’s more dangerous and unpredictable because there are no limits to what they will go to, to make sure their agenda is accomplished.”

Adam Driver with Star Wars co-star Daisy Ridley at a press conference for The Last Jedi in Los Angeles. Picture: Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Disney

His Star Wars co-star Daisy Ridley, who plays his on-screen nemesis Rey, says Driver’s intense reputation is well deserved, but can’t sing his praises loudly enough.

“Adam is one of my favourite people,” Ridley says. “He takes things seriously — and that’s not to say he doesn’t have an incredible sense of humour — but things matter to him on a very deep level. I think it’s amazing, he’s so committed. I am committed but sometimes I am worried I don’t seem that way because I am a bit goofy. He’s incredible to work with, he’s an amazing actor and in this film in particular he is unbelievable.”

The Last Jedi is now showing.