One of the characters from “The Force Awakens” that’s still a pretty big mystery is Supreme Leader Snoke. We know he’s being played by Andy Serkis and will be one of the two motion capture characters along with Maz Kanata. But that’s about it. Well thankfully in their latest “The Force Awakens” article that has just been posted, Entertainment Weekly has shed a little more light on the character, thanks to a conversation they had with Andy Serkis.
You can check out a portion of the interview that was just posted on EW.com below, where Andy Serkis talks about the past and motivation of Supreme Leader Snoke:
“Supreme Leader Snoke is quite an enigmatic character, and strangely vulnerable at the same time as being quite powerful,” Serkis says. “Obviously he has a huge agenda. He has suffered a lot of damage. As I said, there is a strange vulnerability to him, which belies his true agenda, I suppose.”
While Abrams has emphasized a return to practical effects on The Force Awakens, is Snoke perhaps a character who could have been played by Serkis in make-up?
“No, no,” the actor says. “The scale of him, for instance, is one reason. He is large. He appears tall. And also just the facial design – you couldn’t have gotten there with prosthetics. It’s too extreme. Without giving too much away at this point, he has a very distinctive, idiosyncratic bone structure and facial structure. You could never have done it [in real life.]”
If Snoke is a “damaged” character, that raises the question: Did his wounds come from the clash between the Rebellion and the Empire, seen in the original Star Wars trilogy? Serkis hesitates here, but then says he believes Snoke was outside of that conflict.
“No, he’s a new character in this universe. It is very much a newly-introduced character,” Serkis says. “He’s aware of what’s gone on, in the respect that he has been around and is aware of prior events. I think it’d be fair to say that he is aware of the past to a great degree.”
From what Andy Serkis said here, I got both a Palpatine vibe from Snoke with him having a huge agenda, but at the same time feeling he’ll have very different motivations than Palpatine with him being vulnerable, and from having suffered a lot of damage. One things for sure, I can’t wait to find out more about Snoke, and finally see him! It looks like that wont happen until we’re sitting in the theater on December 17th, but that’s fine with me.
Be sure to check out the full interview over at EW.com, where Andy Serkis talks more about the motion capture performance of Snoke, and coming up with his design.
About the author
