Interviews: "Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord" Stars and Creative Team Discuss Lucasfilm's New Animated Series

Early next week will see the debut of the highly anticipated new series from Lucasfilm Animation, Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord. And this week I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with members of the show's cast and creative team as they prepare for the big launch on Disney+.

In the embedded YouTube video below, you can watch my five-minute-long interview with Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord voice cast members Gideon Adlon (who voices the new character of Devon Izara) and Sam Witwer (who has been voicing Maul since the 2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series). Below that is a transcript of the interview.

Watch Sam Witwer / Gideon Adlon INTERVIEW - "Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord"

Mike Celestino, Laughing Place: Gideon, I want to ask about your character, Devon Izara. She's a Jedi Padawan who escaped Order 66 with her Master Eeko-Dio Daki. What can you tell me about the relationship between those two characters, and where where their heads are at as the series begins?

Gideon Adlon: It's a very father/daughter relationship... parental. She would go to lengths to protect him, especially because of their past and what they've been through together. She wants to take care of him, and she clearly does things that maybe he frowns upon, that his morals go against, but in her mind it's [all about] survival and it is [about] protecting who she sees as family, and that is Daki. She will go to great lengths to protect him.

LP: Sam, you've been voicing Maul for quite a while now, obviously-- in The Clone Wars, Rebels, and now here in Maul - Shadow Lord at the middle point of the character's timeline. How does your approach to Maul change depending on where he is in his journey?

Sam Witwer: It was harder than I thought it would be. You would think you'd just jump in and start playing the character, but it took a lot more forethought, a lot more discussion with [Supervising Director Brad Rau] and [Writer / Executive Producer Matt Michnovetz] to figure it out. [With] Star Wars being such a wonderfully moral mythology, well, you're putting Maul as one of your uh point-of-view characters now, so we're going to get inside his head in a in a deeper way. How do you maintain the morality of Star Wars while doing that and while maintaining the integrity of Maul's character? We certainly have the the help of the fact that he's not the only point-of-view character in this-- I mean, Devon is key. She is you know the the Ahsoka [or the] Luke Skywalker of this journey, but what's interesting is we really do spend so much time getting into Maul's head in a way that we've never done before.

I mean, if you ask Maul, he would say he's the Luke Skywalker. Well, I don't think he would put it quite in those terms, but really what it comes down to is this: what we've discovered is, in order to make this show work, you needn't agree with what Maul does, but you must understand why he feels he must do it. He's a very complicated character [and] a very damaged character. But what's exciting about this story is he is thrust into the most uncertain portion of his life. In Clone Wars, he was doing what he had been programmed to do: manipulate people, build an army, take over star systems, take over organizations do all these things. But this time, now he's really on his own. He does not have Savage Opress, his brother who he just lost. He's still dealing with the trauma of that. Now he realizes he has the courage to admit that his father figure, [Darth] Sidious, is the initial source of all of his suffering, and is in fact the source of so many people's suffering in the galaxy. So now he has to question everything he learned from that guy.

So as he steps forward into this story, yes, he has a plan. Yes, he has all this confidence and swagger, but underneath it is a real uncertainty, and him reaching out and trying to figure out what it is that he is supposed to be doing. Even the way he regards Jedi knights is different, because he was taught to hate them by Sidious. But now he looks back at them like, 'Well, now that I've seen the alternative and they're all gone, boy, I'd rather deal with them than the alternative.' The alternative is terrifying and soulless. The Inquisitors have no principles. They're like black holes. There's nothing that he can understand that drives them. and yet they're winning. It's very disturbing to Maul. He is really reassessing his entire life and so yes, that is necessarily a whole new version of the character, and it's always been a new version of the character depending on what era he's in. It's the old thing that that [Star Wars creator George Lucas] would always say or that [current Lucasfilm President Dave Filoni] said to me. He said, 'If we're not going to do something new, what's the point of doing it?'

In my second interview for Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord, I spoke with the animated series' Producer Athena Yvette Portillo, Supervising Director Brad Rau, and Writer / Executive Producer Matt Michnovetz. Once again you can watch the video for the full five-minute interview and then scroll down for the transcript.

Watch "Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord" INTERVIEW with Lucasfilm Producer / Supervising Director / Writer:

Mike Celestino, Laughing Place: We last saw Maul in The Clone Wars season 7, but we also got a little tease of his time running Crimson Dawn and the Shadow Collective in Solo: A Star Wars Story. What makes now the right time to pick up that thread for the character and fill in some of his backstory in that era?

Athena Yvette Portillo: We had the opportunity to provide him with more character depth, so we went for it. It was an idea that [Dave] Filoni had when he was speaking to Matt Michnovetz about it. What I love about it is the fact that we introduce new characters [to interact with Maul], and I know it was one of the challenges to try to figure out how to keep him interesting, how to keep him alive. You always have to find a new way to keep him exciting and alive.

Matt Michnovetz: Yeah, Dave had thrown us an idea for the story, and it just it was amazing. Maul's the right driver for telling a high-adrenaline action roller-coaster ride in this pulpy noir style.

Portillo: I mean, he keeps talking about revenge ever since Episode 1 [The Phantom Menace]. It's [always] about revenge. Then through The Clone Wars, it's [also] about revenge. Well, do we get to see him finally get his revenge? Hmm...

LP: In my opinion this is the best looking Star Wars animated series in the CGI era. What discussions went into the aesthetics of this show and how to set it apart from what's come before?

Brad Rau: Oh, thanks a lot. And I agree with you-- this is the hardest show we've ever made, [and] this is the best-looking show we've ever made. A lot of that was early discussions with with Dave. He really wanted to see the hand of the artist in the frame. He wanted us to experiment with painterly styles. Athena had been talking a bunch about how we went to our models and broke them all down, and tried to make everything a little more nuanced [with] more fidelity in the face. So there's a lot of detail in the in the science of it, but [also] in the artistry of it. We literally have brush strokes in the skin tones and in the matte paintings in the background. Some of them are literal physical matte paintings that have been photographed and comped in to create that look and feel. And the effects, if you freeze-frame and you look at the smoke, you'll see a feeling of a brush stroke. That's literally a brush stroke that was painted on glass and comped in to create that style, so that permeates through the entire thing. Athena, as our fearless leader, has challenged us to keep pushing at every juncture, and it's hard, but it's really good. I think the results are fantastic.

Portillo: We always challenge each other in seeing that as you frame through the shots, we always want each frame that you stop at to be its own piece of art, or a potential trailer shot. [laughs] So, [we] always make sure that it's posed nicely, you've got the motion blur in there, you've got the vignetting in there. We treat it in that way.

LP: Can you talk about the differences between writing for legacy characters like Maul and coming up with original characters like Devon Izara and Looti Vario for this series? How do you make sure all of these old and new characters will blend together well?

Michnovetz: Great question. We have a a tremendously talented team of writers and creative executives that we have [put] together-- from creative executive Josh Rimes to our writers Mandy Muniz, Jen Corbett, Christopher Yost, Julia Cooperman, and these very talented people that help us with all of that. And it takes a while-- I'm not going to lie. We sit down and we [write together and] hopefully these new characters help enhance Maul, and Maul challenges them, and we find ways to write ourselves into a corner and then have to figure out how to get out of that. It's tremendously challenging, but incredibly rewarding when it works.

LP: Obviously Dave Filoni started in Lucasfilm Animation. Now that he's been promoted to president of the company, how involved on a day-to-day basis will Dave be in making animated shows like this one going forward?

Portillo: I mean, he's pretty much the creative executive. I mean, he's currently involved in a lot of the things that we are trying to develop. So we're just very proud of him and very happy that he's there. It's so deserved. He was trained by George Lucas, so he's the best person to be in that role.

Michnovetz: The franchise is in very good hands.

Portillo: Very good hands. Yes.

Rau: And he still has time to bust us in our chops to make sure we're staying on the right track.

Michnovetz: To keep us honest. [laughs]

Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord will debut with its first two episodes this coming Monday, April 6, exclusively via Disney+.