Katee Sackhoff on taking Bo-Katan from Clone Wars to The Mandalorian

Sci-fi queen Katee Sackhoff has the rare distinction of taking an animated character into live action, but for her, it wasn’t easy.

If you’re a sci-fi or genre fan, you’ve been watching Katee Sackhoff grace your screen for 15 years.

Known for playing female characters who take no bullsh*t including Battlestar Galactica’s Kara “Starbuck” Thrace and Longmire’s Vic Moretti, Sackhoff now has the rare distinction of taking an animated character into live-action.

Having voiced fan favourite Bo-Katan Kryze on Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, she propelled Bo-Katan’s jump into 3D as the same character on The Mandalorian this season.

Sackhoff talks to news.com.au about the challenges of morphing a voice performance into a physical one and what she hopes a new audience makes of Bo-Katan’s strength.

How did this come about? How did you find out Bo-Katan was going to be in The Mandalorian?

About a year and a half ago, I pulled [The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian writer and director] Dave Filoni aside and I said, and I was very much joking at the time, ‘You know that show The Mandalorian, you know Bo-Katan is a Mandalorian? I’m just going to leave that there’. And he sort of gave me this ‘Well, you never know.’ At that point I was just making a joke.

Katee Sackhoff was surprised to get the call from The Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau.

RELATED: The Mandalorian season two review

When I got the phone call from my manager that [showrunner] Jon Favreau wanted to sit down with me, I was blown. I was just so thoroughly excited to sit down with him. I don’t think my brain understood that he was asking me if I wanted to be in the show until a good 15 minutes into the meeting. I was just like, ‘Oh, wait, what, me?’

It’s wild that this animated character that you voiced for years now exists in corporeal form. Were there challenges in finding the physicality of that character?

Absolutely. I had already played Bo-Katan for almost 10 years. So, in my mind, I had done the work, I knew Bo-Katan. I knew her better than anybody except Dave Filoni so I didn’t think I had to work on her physicality. I have played so many strong women that I was like, ‘It’s fine, I’ve got this.’

I remember the first day that I showed up on set, I was just terrified, realising that all the work I’d done – the voice work, the backstory work – for 10 years did not prepare me to play her at all. It had helped me to understand her, but it didn’t help me to play her.

[Episode director] Bryce Dallas Howard really helped me and shepherded me through that process. I kept saying to her, ‘It’s just so weird, I can’t my finger on it, I don’t know, I’m having such a hard time with this.”

And Bryce told me how she made the beautiful connection of Pinocchio. I instantly felt calm in playing Bo-Katan because I knew now this is exactly how I felt. I felt like I had been Pinocchio for 10 years and then I magically turned into a real boy and I didn’t know how to walk and talk.

The Mandalorian season two is streaming now on Disney+.

RELATED: Luther creator Neil Cross on how he shakes off the horrors of what he writes

One of my first days, we did the scene in the restaurant where we’re sitting next to Mando and Baby [Yoda]. Jon was there and he and Bryce said, ‘Now do [a take] where you’ve got a secret, now do one like you want something, now one like you’re mob boss, and one like you’re a queen.’

I was taking Bo-Katan all over the place but every single one of those depictions of her helped me figure out who she was. Because she is all of those things.

She’s the amalgamation of all of those things?

There is a part of her that’s regal, a part of her that’s gritty, a part of her that’s dangerous and has a secret, a part of her that’s insecure and she’s also a young woman who think she’s capable of leading. All those things make up who she is.

Is it odd to have been in one corner of the Star Wars universe in a show that is a huge deal to dedicated fans and then to be involved in a series that has a more mainstream appeal?

Yes. It feels like we were a beautifully kept secret for loyal fans of the show, like we were a little engine that could that was allowed to go on for so long, and create this vast backstory for all of these characters.

And because it was animation, there’s such a freedom there.

Katee Sackhoff voiced Bo-Katan in The Clone Wars.

It was so funny going online [after The Mandalorian episode] and have people asking ‘Who’s Bo-Katan? She’s amazing but who is she?’.

I think there were three types of people watching that episode. There were people that as soon as they saw the owl helmet, flipped the F out. Then there were people that were like, ‘That was so cool, I love her.’

And then there were people that had no reaction to her whatsoever because they were so obsessed with the fact that Baby was almost eaten!

What did you want to bring to the character here for people who didn’t know who she was? What was the one thing that you really wanted them to see?

I was definitely thinking, ‘How do I make sure that this character lives in this world forever?’ I was constantly walking by Jon and Dave during that episode and going, ‘She’s not going to die, right?’ As long as she’s alive, there is hope for Bo-Katan?

It was important to me to represent a female Mandalorian in a very, very strong way. They are warriors, these are people that are brought up to be warriors and to protect their people – there is a pride to that and there is a strength to that.

Katee Sackhoff is best known for her role on Battlestar Galactica.

The fact that she is a woman does not come into who she is as a fighter and a Mandalorian. Who she is under that is very impressed by the fact that she is a woman but that’s who she is underneath, not who she is at face value.

I wanted people to be blown away that female Mandalorians were as capable as the men. I think that’s why little girls and women are so excited by these characters because we love to see kick-ass women.

We do.

It’s what we love to see. We love to see the Wonder Womans of the world. We love it because we want to believe we’re capable of anything. When we see these characters, it fills my imagination with all of these possibilities.

I can’t wait to see her again, and I hope she doesn’t die. Even if she did, Kara cheated death, so there’s always a way back.

She did. She cheated death long enough to save humanity!

The Mandalorian is streaming now on Disney+ with new episodes available on Fridays from 7pm AEDT

Share your movies and TV obsessions | @wenleima