No Guest Found in this category
May the Fourth be with you, Supa-Fans! A wise Jedi master once said, “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.” That juicy nugget of wisdom from everyone’s favourite green, swamp-dwelling puppet certainly holds true for the latest show to come from the good folks at Lucasfilm Animation, Star Wars: Tales of the Empire.
Following on from 2022’s Tales of the Jedi, this latest batch of animated shorts from Dave Filoni and the people behind Star Wars: The Clone Wars shifts its attention to two beloved characters with deep ties to the Galactic Empire and its dark designs. Ahead of Tale of the Empire’s streaming debut this Star Wars Day, we participated in a series of round table interviews with cast members Meredith Salenger (former Jedi Padawan turned Inquisitor Barriss Offee) and Diana Lee Inosanto (Nightsister and Imperial Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth).
“I’m so happy to be back playing Barriss Offee,” Salenger enthuses, having first voiced the character in season two of The Clone Wars some 14 years earlier. “And just watching her trajectory from starting in the Clone Wars, where she loved being a Padawan learner.”
Picking up from where audiences last saw her in The Clone Wars, cast out of the Jedi order and imprisoned for orchestrating the bombing of the Jedi temple, in Tales of the Empire “we find her after she’s had time in jail to think about what she’s done and the kind of person she wants to be”.
“Unfortunately,” the Star Wars veteran explains, “she is greeted by an Inquisitor. Barriss is probably thinking, ‘Where am I going to go with this story? Am I leaning into the Dark Side? The arc that Tales of the Empire gives her is so interesting and so intense. It was fascinating to just play all these emotions.”
In stark contrast to Barriss, a character who has been a fan favourite since her live-action debut in 2002’s Attack of the Clones, Tales of the Empire also helps to solve many of the mysteries surrounding one of the franchise’s newest villains, Morgan Elsbeth. Inosanto, who first joined the Star Wars franchise in season two of The Mandalorian before masterminding Grand Admiral Thrawn’s return in last year’s Ahsoka, has returned to voice the formidable Imperial Magistrate with deep connections to the Nightsisters of Dathomir.
“Morgan Elsbeth has come a long way, hasn’t she?” Inosanto muses, revealing that when she first played the character, she didn’t even have a name. “When I did The Mandalorian, I was stunned on the night that it aired, I would hear Ahsoka played by Rosario Dawson, say ‘Morgan Elsbeth’, and then go into what little back story I knew about her.”
“So, to have this amazing animation Tales of the Empire go into Morgan Elsbeth’s backstory at different stages of her life is so thrilling for me,” she continues. “I know some people have said, ‘I’d like to know more about Morgan. How did she meet Thrawn? How did that happen?’ You know, ‘Was she there on Dathomir? Was she there to see the chaos?’ And so, I love that Tales of the Empire explores all this with Morgan. And I think it’s a way for audiences worldwide to be more connected with her and [learn] why she really is a survivor in the galaxy.”
Yet whether it be just a few short years, or well over a decade, both actors have developed a close attachment with the characters they portray. “I’ve been obsessed with the character of Barriss since I got her,” Salenger admits. “I love the way she’s animated. I love who she is. I love her accent. I love her story, and I really like the way her brain works… I was thrilled when I got the call from Dave Filoni that she’d be coming back and then, just as I’ve learned through each script, her arc. It’s fascinating to watch, what he laid out for her.”
Barriss Offee
Meanwhile, Inosanto is equally full of praise for series creator and Lucasfilm’s Chief Creative Officer. “I just love how Dave is like this walking encyclopaedia,” she says of the man responsible for introducing her own character into the Star Wars universe. “But he’s also so committed to protecting the Star Wars universe and making sure that its philosophy stays aligned with what George Lucas envisioned for it.”
Yet Lucas and Filoni are not the only voices responsible for shaping the rich tapestry that is the current Star Wars universe. “I went to the Thrawn books that were written by Timothy Zahn,” Inosanto says of her intense research and preparation for her role. “And those are very helpful to me. But when I found out I was going to be in Ahsoka, [I] was really looking at new material and that was from E. Anne Convery who wrote Bug [short story from 2002’s The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark] and I just sort of had to assume that, you know, she was maybe a witness to what happened on Dathomir.”
“Even the video games,” she continues, “with Star Wars: Fallen Order. The relationship between Cal Kestis and Merrin, you know, I was kind of getting clues about the whole Nightsister culture.”
“To have this new show come out on May the 4th is so exciting,” Salenger says of the show’s planned debut on what is now known worldwide as Star Wars Day. “May the fourth be with you. It’s so exciting that the Tales of the Empire is such a great show.”
Charting the divergent paths of two fearsome warriors whose paths will forever change the destiny of the Galactic Empire, Star Wars: Tales of the Empire is available exclusively on Disney+.
