The Acolyte’s Amandla Stenberg on Playing Twins, the Sith, and Star Wars

Amandla Stenberg has done her research.

The Anakin Skywalker-loving, Padmé Amidala-cosplaying performer has been a fan of Star Wars since childhood, but they didn’t rely on that base knowledge when she was cast in The Acolyte. For months leading into production, Stenberg trained their body and mind, working on stunt choreography and martial arts movements while creating a dossier for her own character headcanon.

Spoiler warning: This article discusses story details from the season finale of The Acolyte.

For the first few weeks promoting the new Star Wars live-action series, with all episodes now streaming on Disney+, Stenberg could only coyly answer questions about the assassin Mae, the mysterious masked warrior who is out for revenge against the Jedi Order. Until the series premiere, it was a well-guarded secret that they’re pulling double duty, acting not only as Mae, but also portraying the role of her twin sister, Osha. But that was far from the only secret Stenberg was keeping about her characters and Osha's thrilling arc — a series of tragic events that ends with her bleeding a kyber crystal for the first time in live action and traveling to a strange new world where Darth Plagueis himself can be found lurking in the shadows.

"Bleeding the crystal was something that [series creator Leslye Headland] had introduced to me as a concept from the very beginning," Stenberg tells StarWars.com. "I always knew that was going to happen, and I just thought that's the coolest thing in the world. But Plagueis was hidden from me." It wasn't until the finale aired that Stenberg saw the Sith Lord for the first time along with the rest of the fans experiencing the series from home. "I just freaked out," Stenberg says of the reveal. "I think Plagueis is one of the coolest parts of canon, and I think one of the most intriguing parts. And I just felt so happy that the show honored this part of the timeline by including him. Because for me, like so many other Star Wars fans, he's been an element I've been so intrigued by for so long."

But they had their suspicions in the earliest days of pre-production. "I pieced it together," she says. "It was probably a couple weeks in that I went to Leslye and I said, 'Is Darth Plagueis gonna be in the show?' And she looked at me and winked and refused to say anything."

Stenberg and Headland bonded during the creation of the series. The actor was Headland’s first choice for the two parts, after the filmmaker watched Stenberg’s gut-wrenching portrayal of Starr Carter in The Hate U Give, brilliantly executed in stark contrast to her joyful demeanor in interviews that showcased her real personality. “Amandla floated to the top of the list practically immediately,” Headland tells StarWars.com. “I will never forget meeting with her. Just in the back of my mind, like, ‘Oh, God. If she doesn't do this, I don't know what I'm going to do.’”

Now with all eight episodes streaming on Disney+, listen as Stenberg talks about making the two roles distinct for the series centered on duality and the moral gray area between good and evil, keeping secrets, and Osha's journey from former Jedi Padawan to acolyte of the Sith.

Two sisters

The sisters may look alike, but Stenberg’s approach to the roles treated them as their own unique characters. “They're twins that are energetically very different from each other,” Stenberg says. “I like to think of them as yin and yang. They've had very different life experiences that have taken them on different journeys."

Watch closely and you’ll see the nuance of Stenberg’s performance as her mannerisms shift to embody Mae and Osha. Behind the scenes, Stenberg worked to craft the twinned personas, writing up their own headcanon for the young women and identifying different scents, different songs, and different gaits to help her drop into each character. “Scent is really connected to memory, so that was a shortcut to remind me where I was. The first thing that I focused on was their walk,” Stenberg says. “Yang is masculine and bright, and that's Osha in my mind. Yin is feminine, dark and mysterious, and that's Mae.”

While Headland and her writing team were working on Mae and Osha’s story in the series, Stenberg created her own PowerPoint presentation on what they thought the sisters had endured. “I did a lot of backstory work,” she says. “I have [character] bibles with me on set because things move so fast and you're always shooting out of order. I always have this packet of information to ground me back into the characters.”

For Mae, Erykah Badu’s “The Healer” played on repeat to get Stenberg ready to embody the warrior. For Osha, it was a playlist featuring Aphex Twin. “There's something mathematical about it,” Stenberg says of the latter. “Osha is a very practical person and her relationship to things is very tactile. She loves droids, she loves ships, she loves things she can touch and fix. She loves technology. She's very rooted in the world of math and science.”

Training to fight

And, of course, the physical training was an essential part of embodying Mae in particular, Stenberg says. “It takes a whole family to make a stunt sequence,” they note. Stunt supervisor Mark Ginther and action designer Christopher Clark Cowan worked to block out and choreograph the hand-to-hand combat sequences, while stunt performer and assistant fight coordinator Lu Junchang took Stenberg and the rest of the cast on as Padawans of sorts. “Lu was my Master; he taught me everything that I could possibly need to know. Six weeks ahead of production we were in the stunt gym, drilling basics, really working on hip placement, punch drills, kick drills, combos, boxing, and then practicing with my knife,” Stenberg says.

The opening noodle shop battle with Master Indara (Carrie-Anne Moss) glimpsed in the trailers was the first full fight sequence Stenberg learned for the part, working in tandem with her stunt doubles, Cassie Jo Craig and Kellina Rutherford, “who became like my sisters” Stenberg says. “We always trained together. We practiced choreo together. We mirrored each other's bodies a lot of the time. We were side by side. Even though the show's about twins, we were kind of like triplets.”

Now with all eight episodes of The Acolyte streaming, Stenberg says Osha is the true main character, not Mae. "It's always been about Osha's emotional arc and for her to finally give herself the permission to let go, release control, and let the Force come through her. Even though that happens in an incredibly dark way, I think that has always been sort of the the beauty of her journey."

The key moment isn't just the bleeding of the kyber crystal, but the wrath that pushes her to that point: killing her former Master, Sol, with only the Force as her ally. Stenberg sees the dark moment as Osha's liberation from her past, "to be able to confront and destroy all of the pain and trauma that she might have experienced in her life," and reclaim her future as her own. As a scene partner, Lee Jung-jae shines as he brings out an array of complex emotions as Sol. "He's just so phenomenal," Stenberg says. "He was somehow able to add all of this grace and depth and emotionality to being Force choked."

Osha and the Stranger

Stenberg also shares several scenes this season with Manny Jacinto as the Stranger, Mae's Master who plays a pivotal role in articulating the seductive nature of the dark side when he and Osha are alone on the unknown planet. "Manny was such a graceful, supportive, inventive scene partner," Stenberg says. "We had so many conversations — me, Leslye, and Manny — in pre-production and then throughout filming around how to ensure that Osha's path ultimately felt autonomous. We wanted to showcase the delicious seduction that everyone loves about the dark side of the Force while also making it very clear that this is a young woman who isn't being manipulated into making a choice, but rather one who is presented with options and chooses one. And I think Manny was a vital part of making that work."

What works so well about Osha and the Stranger's connection is the empathy they have for each other once they have a quiet moment to talk. "I think what we really honed in on was them having these traumatic pasts and experiences that shaped them to feel like outsiders and to crave something else," Stenberg says. "I think that really is why Star Wars is so universally allegorical. We are all presented with variables in life and it's the way that we respond to those variables that defines us. I think there's always been so much intrigue into the dark side of the Force for that reason. And here the emotional core of it is that these two people don't have a place that they belong and they don't have many others to identify with, but they find that in each other."

But neither Mae nor Osha's arcs are really about being good or bad, at least not for Stenberg. "The whole journey, for me filming the show, felt like a confrontation of self, especially because I was playing twins." And now that she's firmly established as a part of the Star Wars galaxy, Stenberg's own life will never be the same.

"It's definitely changed me forever. There's so much about it that I could not have anticipated and there are valuable life lessons that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life."