Castle-Hughes left her native New Zealand to arrive in Sydney for a single day of shooting on a very tight schedule. "We came to Australia only the day before filming," she recalls. "We did the last costume fitting -- which was only the second costume fitting -- so it was very nerve-wracking for them just in case things didn't fit. But it all went fine."
As Queen Apailana, Castle-Hughes inherits a regal design legacy that stretches back to the first prequel, The Phantom Menace. Her robes display the style and elegance of peaceful Naboo. "I liked the whole look of the thing. It made me feel really proud to be wearing it."
Rebecca Jackson Mendoza, who played Alderaan's Queen Breha Organa, also had high marks for the designs of Trisha Biggar. "I felt like I was in a wedding -- a green wedding gown," she says. "It was originally going to be velvet, but then they decided that might come off too dark, so they changed it."
Although a fan of the original films, Jackson Mendoza admits that it was her brothers who pieced together the significance of her role before she did. "To be honest, I was kept in the dark up until I got on set," she says. "I knew I was Queen of Alderaan. My brothers are Star Wars freaks, and they said, 'Oh, you're gonna be the surrogate mother of Princess Leia."
The significance of their roles are not lost on these young actresses. "When I found out this was going to be the last Star Wars film that was ever going to be made, I felt pretty privileged to be in it," says Castle-Hughes.
"As a girl growing up and seeing Star Wars, of course you want to be Princess Leia," explains Jackson Mendoza. "And to know that I'm actually playing her mother... I just kept thinking about those buns! I was the mother of those buns! Maybe I taught her how to do those buns!"
This story originally appeared in issue #161 of the StarWars.com Homing Beacon email newsletter.
