{"id":269804,"date":"2025-11-04T00:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T00:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/269804\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T00:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T00:02:07","slug":"rian-johnson-guessed-daniel-craigs-star-wars-cameo-before-anyone-else-could","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/269804\/","title":{"rendered":"Rian Johnson Guessed Daniel Craig’s ‘Star Wars’ Cameo Before Anyone Else Could"},"content":{"rendered":"

We know Rian Johnson has a keen eye<\/a> for\u00a0Star Wars (and wanting to get back to it, the long, long way round<\/a>), and we know he has a keen eye for murder mysteries with all his work on the\u00a0Knives Out movies<\/a>. But he is also apparently good at blending those skills for a secret third talent: being able to figure out\u00a0someone special is hidden under layers of Stormtrooper armor\u2026 especially when it came to his future\u00a0Knives Out star.<\/p>\n

At this point we all know<\/a> that Daniel Craig had a special cameo in the first entry of the\u00a0Star Wars sequel trilogy, playing the First Order Stormtrooper that Rey manages to successfully use a Jedi mind trick on to free herself from Kylo Ren\u2019s captivity. But in a recent Q&A session for the latest\u00a0Knives Out movie,\u00a0Wake Up Dead Man (alongside Craig himself and moderated by\u00a0Force Awakens and Rise of Skywalker director<\/a> JJ Abrams), Johnson shared how he managed to figure it out early\u2026 well, mostly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was writing episode eight, we were watching dailies, because [Abrams was] shooting seven,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cOne day\u2026 it was a scene with Daisy [Ridley] where she does the Force mind control on a Stormtrooper and gets him to unlock her things. The daily came up, the stormtrooper came up, she said it, the Stormtrooper didn\u2019t say anything\u2014just walked across the room to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I did this,\u201d Johnson continued, adjusting himself to sit straight in his seat. \u201c\u2018Who\u2019s that actor?\u2019 And Pablo [Hidalgo] at Lucasfilm was like, \u2018I think it\u2019s just a stunt dude in a Stormtrooper thing,\u2019 and I go, \u2018No\u2014that\u2019s a real actor, just from the way they walked across the stage.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson got the confirmation a day later that he was right\u2014and that it was none other than the future Benoit Blanc\u2014and of course, the rest is history.<\/p>\n

Although the idea of putting the two directors of the\u00a0Star Wars sequel trilogy together on a panel (alongside a notable and easily identified Stormtrooper) might get Star Wars fans on tenterhooks seeing what tidbits about making\u00a0The Force Awakens,\u00a0The Last Jedi, and\u00a0The Rise of Skywalker might emerge, that was pretty much all Johnson and Abrams had to say about the galaxy far, far away and their part in it. You\u2019ll simply have to make do with two very talented directors and a Hollywood megastar talking shop about making movies and\u00a0Knives Out in the full Q&A session below, instead.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We know Rian Johnson has a keen eye for\u00a0Star Wars (and wanting to get back to it, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[37116,88,206,495,5295,63088],"class_list":["post-269804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-daniel-craig","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-rian-johnson","tag-star-wars","tag-star-wars-the-force-awakens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}