This cutie! pic.twitter.com/ub9GuO7iC3
— Laura Dern (@LauraDern) December 3, 2017
The Force was strong in Los Angeles this weekend during a press conference for the highly-anticipated Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which comes out NEXT WEEK. And during that press conference, we got to see at least one love affair in full-bloom. I’m talking, of course, about the one between Laura Dern and BB-8.
As you can see above, Dern (who will play Vice Admiral Holdo in Last Jedi) is absolutely smitten with the droid, and who can blame her? BB-8 is the absolute cutest. Unpopular opinion: BB-8 > Porgs. Yeah, I said it. Don’t get me wrong, porgs are adorable, but BB-8 manages to be adorable as heck without the use of standard animal cuteness indicators. Now that’s star quality!
And speaking of stars, the women of The Last Jedi were in attendance and were asked to talk about the sorely missed Carrie Fisher, who gave her final performance as Dr. General Princess Leia Organa PhD in the film.
Both Dern and Gwendoline Christie (Captain Phasma) talked about how inspirational Fisher was to them, both as Leia when they were girls, and as Carrie when they were old enough to realize her real-life badassery.
Christie said that Leia “was really instrumental to me as someone that didn’t feel like they fitted that homogenized view of what a woman was supposed to be. That there was inspiration there. That you could be an individual and celebrate yourself and be successful without giving yourself over, without necessarily making some sort of terrible, huge compromise. So it was a big inspiration for me.”
Daisy Ridley, who is the youngest of the women, focused on the kind of mom Fisher was to her daughter Billie Lourd, also in The Last Jedi. Says Ridley of seeing Fisher’s amazing, real-life qualities in Lourd, “She’s smart and funny and shameless and wonderful. … I think Carrie bringing up a daughter who has all of those qualities and then some in this world, if that’s what she did just being herself, I think it speaks volumes to what she did as her in the spotlight and also her as Leia.”
Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico), who’s about to have her world explode as a new addition to this huge franchise, talked about how fearless Fisher needed to be to handle the fame thrust upon her by something like Star Wars. “Something about Carrie that I really look up to,” she says. “And something I didn’t realize until recently, was just how much courage it takes to truly be yourself when you’re on a public platform or when possibly a lot of people will be looking at you. She was so unapologetic and so openly herself, and that is something that I am really trying to do, and it’s hard. I think that she will always be an icon as Leia, but also as Carrie. I am so fortunate to have met her, and I think that she will really live on forever.”
No matter what cute characters come and go, and no matter how many women are added to the Star Wars universe, there will only ever be one Leia, and she will indeed live on in our hearts through this film and beyond.
(via SyFy Wire, image: screencap)
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