‘The Acolyte’ star Lee Jung-jae took inspiration from Qui-Gon Jinn

When Lee Jung-jae signed on to play a Jedi master in Star Wars, he only wanted to focus on one thing: Star Wars. “I didn’t really want to be influenced by anything outside of the Star Wars world,” he tells Entertainment Weekly through an interpreter. Instead, the Squid Game star wanted to immerse himself in a galaxy far, far away to take on his role of Master Sol on The Acolyte, which premieres June 4 on Disney+.

“I definitely was inspired by a lot of the past Jedi Masters and the wonderful actors that played them. And one of my favorite characters was Qui-Gon Jinn, played by Liam Neeson. I really kind of tried to find the connective tissue between him and my character, Master Sol.”

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That reference to the wise yet headstrong Qui-Gon perhaps offers the biggest clue yet in terms of what sort of Jedi Sol will be while navigating a new threat at the tail end of the High Republic era. And while stoicism is a trait of many Jedi, it was Sol’s emotional range that attracted the actor to the project.

“He is a Jedi master, but the more I saw the script, I realized that there were more of these humanistic elements to him,” says Lee. “His emotions are constantly in flux. And also, when he’s in battle, he actually does feel that element of fear. And I think because of that, [showrunner Leslye Hedland] really created a Sol that was extremely humanistic. And she did that with the other characters as well — they all embody such a diversity of emotions, just like regular people. And in each character, you see those elements really clearly.”

One other element of the production that Lee particularly enjoyed was the lightsaber and fight training, even if he did consider himself a little advanced for some of it at the start. “I’ve actually done a lot of action in my previous projects in Korea, so when I entered the two months of training camp, I noticed that the fight choreographers, they started teaching for the basics. And a part of me was like, ‘Oh, I kind of know all of this already.’”

The fruit of that labor, however, was eventually revealed. “But then I realized that as the training continued, those basics that we practiced over and over again, it really helped doing these stunts and the fight choreography on set.”

Both the choreography and the humanistic elements will be on full display when The Acolyte premieres June 4 on Disney+.

Additional reporting by Devan Coggan.