"It was basically universal excitement," co-showrunner Benji Samit told Polygon during a press day, when asked how the legacy actors reacted to the fresh takes on their characters. "You got some of these actors, like Mark [Hamill] or Anthony [Daniels], [who] have been doing it for 40-plus years, and it's always been more or less the same version of the characters. Which they love, obviously, but I think it was really fun and refreshing for everyone to do a new spin on their characters."
"And that extends also to people like Ahmed Best," added co-showrunner Dan Hernandez. "My appreciation for his performance and the characterization of Jar Jar Binks has only exponentially grown over this process. He came into it; he started improv-ing. He had the voice, he had the mannerisms, he had everything down so perfectly that we just kind of said, Let him cook, because he's got it!"
Rebuild the Galaxy also gave characters with minor roles in the movies more access to the spotlight. Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), for instance, gets to be a Sith Lord, while Rise of Skywalker's underused character Jannah (Naomi Ackie) is now on the Jedi Council.
Hernandez and Samit told us it was exciting to spend more time with those characters, and that the actors were almost universally gung-ho - even if some them took a little time to figure out the nuances of these new personalities and roles.
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