Entertainment Weekly continues their “Rogue One” behind the scenes articles today with some information on Bodhi Rook’s original characterization, which is totally different than what we got in the film.
Here’s what actor Riz Ahmed tells Entertainment Weekly how Bodhi was originally going to be portrayed and his original name, as well as a different sequence explained by Garry Whitta that had the rebels losing the U-Wing:
“His name was Bokan, and he was actually Saw Gerrera’s engineer, living on a planet with a strong electromagnetic field, which meant that electronics were never working,” Ahmed says. “He was actually an Imperial engineer who had been kidnapped and kind of had Stockholm Syndrome. He had been living there for so long, he kind of lost it, like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now.”
Bokan was still a key to unlocking the Death Star’s weakness, so he was sought by both heroes and villains alike. The moon Gerrera was using as a hideout protected their little crew of insurgents from all search parties, and the Rebel team led by Jyn Erso originally wrecked its U-wing trying to track them down.
“We knew we needed to ditch the U-Wing and get them on that Imperial shuttle that they used at the end. In the finished film, you see that scene happen on Eadu,” says Gary Whitta.
Before that evolution in the story, the Rebels crash-landed amid the electrical storms of Gerrera’s moon. “When they try to land, there’s a ship graveyard, and that’s part of the reason the Empire’s never found [Gerrera],” says Gary Whitta, who worked on the early screenplays. “Saw has modified his ships to survive in that environment but nothing else can land.”
While the story we got for Bodhi worked really well in “Rogue One,” having him be captured by Saw and becomes a bit crazy is something I think could’ve worked well too for his background story.
For more changes made to Bodhi, including how he was originally supposed to die, be sure to check out the full article over at Entertainment Weekly
About the author
