Sitting down with Rogue One’s ‘Director Orson Krennic’ – Ben Mendelsohn!! #RogueOneEvent

Sitting down with Rogue One’s ‘Director Orson Krennic’ played by Ben Mendelsohn!! 

Hello. So I’m Ben Mendelsohn. I play director, Orson Krennic who is the director of military intelligence and operations. And for the purposes of our film it means he’s the dude that built the Death Star and is bringing it to its final brilliance.

You grew up being a Star Wars fan. Did you ever imagine yourself being on the empire side?

No. No, I mean but that’s the folly of youth isn’t it? No one imagines that they’re going to end up on the side of the empire. But you get older. You know you come to realize the peace and stability in the galaxy is worth fighting for and that all these airy, fairy ideals of the rebellion are very well and good but what happens when they get into power?

No, I didn’t but I wish I could have told myself at various points through life, don’t worry, one day you’ll be in Star Wars. That would have been good to know –  but there you go.

A question from a reader was to inquire about Ben’s characters/roles he’s played – trademarked collectively, (this is a quote) ‘as unlikable sociopaths’ – how do you feel about being labelled as such?

That’s my recent body of work. That’s my, you might call it, my unlikable sociopath phase.

Ben continues that while he plays these roles in movies and on TV he is absolutely separated from the roles he plays and as such he is ok with a generalization such as this about these characters.

Do you prefer those evil roles to the good roles?

Well, I do think there’s a certain palette of emotions that you get to work with more if you’re playing you know the bad guys like the angry, resentful, enraged sort of stuff. I consider it a real honor to be playing bad guys and certainly in this film and there’ll be one or two more.

Yeah, I consider it a real honor. But I’ve had a long and varied career.  I don’t associate myself with my characters you know but you know its fine that everyone else does.

What was the atmosphere on your set? Was there a team of bad guys? We heard from the others today how it was a family and they were together. So what was that like for you?

You know what you can say about the Empire is at least you know where you stand. I think those guys did form that [a family] because they went through a lot. And you know obviously in this sort of balance of shooting those guys are spending a lot of time together. The Empire’s a bit more of a solitary place in that way.

But I had a good group, a good little cadre with me. I had sort of the dude that’s my second in command and the death troopers with me.

You can’t have a bad day. You look up and you see storm troopers around and stuff like that in your workplace. You really can’t have a terribly bad day.  

What was the most difficult part for you?

I think it was the first few days of being there.  Having storm troopers taken into those Imperial sets and stuff like that.  It took a while to sort of just be able to go okay – you’ve got this.

When asked if he took anything from the set Ben joked around about how, in America, it is great that you can take the fifth.

Let me tell you what’s fantastic about this country. And I do love this. You can take the fifth here, you know? What a beautiful country.

What would be your best scene, the one that you like the most.

That scene you saw with Mads that’s among my favorites. That was an incredibly [difficult day] – it was a brutally, brutally difficult day. We were in Iceland. It was absolutely prohibitively freezing. And the weather changed greatly.

Ben says that there are other scenes with Darth Vader and one in the Imperial territories, that he loves, however, he couldn’t talk to it as that part of the movie has not been seen by the general public at this time.  SO – you’ll just have to go SEE the movie to choose favorite scenes for yourself!!

Be sure to read my recap of the Rogue One Press Event & previous interviews;

• Rogue One Press Event Recap – Experiencing Skywalker Ranch & Lucasfilm HQ
• Discussing Jyn Erso with Felicity Jones
• Diego Luna – an ordinary man on an extraordinary journey as Captain Cassian Andor
• Mads Mikkelsen & Alan Tudyk on Rogue One
• Donnie Yen on Rogue One, playing a blind spiritual warrior & more

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY arrives in theaters everywhere on December 16th in 3D, Real D 3D and IMAX 3D!!!

That’s in 2 days!!!

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Visit the official ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY website!!