Star Wars actor Katee Sackhoff has said her experience on The Mandalorian left her largely unable to work, after struggles understanding her character impacted her confidence.
Sackhoff stars in The Mandalorian as warrior princess Bo-Katan Kryze, reprising her role in live-action after voicing the character for nearly a decade in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, as well as in episodes of Star Wars: Rebels and Tales of the Empire.
A guest star in The Mandalorian’s second season, Sackhoff’s character grows in importance throughout its third run — though it is now unclear if or when fans might see Kryze again.
“I lost all of my confidence after Mandalorian, all of it,” Sackhoff said in a video posted to her YouTube channel, describing her growing struggles with the character. “My style of acting has always just been, ‘Your first instinct is the right instinct. Do that. Play the reality of the situation.’ And I’ve never really played a character.
“Do you know what I mean?” Sackhoff continued, “I’ve always played two steps removed from myself, in a sense. It always felt grounded in some part of my belly of who I was. Bo-Katan is nowhere near who I am as a human being. Her life, what she wants, I didn’t understand her. As much as I understood her, I never felt her in my stomach. I never identified with her. I didn’t know how to find her.”
The comments are intriguing to hear now from Sackhoff, after having played Bo-Katan Kryze since 2012 — albeit previously only via voice-over.
“It broke me,” Sackhoff continued. “It just broke me, where I started doubting everything about myself. I’m not a strong auditioner on tape, and I was having to put myself on tape. I wasn’t booking anything. And for three years, I basically didn’t work. And it just destroyed my confidence.”
The Mandalorian himself will next appear in the upcoming Star Wars movie The Mandalorian & Grogu, though there’s been no word of Katee Sackhoff returning. Perhaps we’ll see her again in a few years’ time, alongside Boba Fett, for Dave Filoni’s New Republic hero team-up movie, which is set to round out the stories of The Mandalorian and Ahsoka’s wider set of characters in a few years’ time.
In the meantime, Sackhoff will next be seen in a fresh adaptation of Stephen King horror classic Carrie, which is being turned into an Amazon Prime series by horror legend Mike Flanagan.
Image credit: Photo by Corey Nickols/Getty Images for IMDb.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
