The Mandalorian has come to be a show made us fans of characters we never thought possible, like The Armorer. Played beautifully by Emily Swallow, she is a character who is shrouded in mystery and a character who, for the most part, is not really an ally for Din Djarin. That is until she realized that fighting the "ideas" about what makes a Mandalorian was part of why there were so few of them left. "This is the way" doesn't mean fighting your own kind. And at Star Wars Celebration, Collider was lucky enough to speak to Swallow at the press line after the Lucasfilm panel!
Swallow is someone, though, who clearly gets it. When asked how many people ask her to do lines as the Armorer for voicemails, Swallow replied "A lot, but I don't get sick of it. I mean, I have the coolest catchphrase ever. "And it is true, saying 'This is the way' and having the power behind it that she has really does make for the best catchphrase. Tied with "I have spoken," of course.
But she also understands that fan expectations range. There are fans who genuinely love The Mandalorian, those who want to be contrarian, as well as haters who just want to complain about Star Wars as a whole. So when asked what fans would think of the finale, she was very honest, "Well, I think there are gonna be some people who are like 'Woohoo! Yeah!'' and some people were like 'I hate this!' this because there always are."
What's so fun about Swallow is that she seems to have a lot of fun with being a part of Star Wars. She talked a lot about what was surprising about making The Mandalorian and pointed out that it is a surprisingly long process to do so. We asked about what was the most shocking thing about the behind-the-scenes of making the series. "Oh golly! Well, it takes forever, because there's so many…I mean, to make it look so cool," she said. "Like it's astonishing to me to shoot it and to see what it looks like when we're shooting it and then to watch it and see how incredible it is. And I go, “Oh my gosh, I didn't know I was on that location.” And it wasn't because you know, like in the first episode when we were shooting on the beach with that strange croc-gator-turtle, or whatever it was that came after us. It was like we were in this like beautiful mountain lake. And I said “I would like to go there,” but we were on this backlot where they had like built this artificial sand, and it’s astonishing."
Emily Swallow on Breaking Character on Set
It isn't all fun and games though. Swallow was asked about breaking on set and what happens when someone tried to mess up a scene. But Swallow revealed that she messes up herself a lot. "I mess myself up enough just by like…on camera it’s always very serious, I’m very stoic. But I also like, you know, can’t really see much, and it used to be that I couldn’t— Season 1, my gloves were big, and Jon called them my oven mitts, and so I would go to try to pick up some of my tools because I'm supposed to be a very competent forger and welder and metalworker and I couldn't grasp things, because the gloves were just too big and clunky. It's embarrassing when you’re supposed to be competent in your job," she said.
But she went on to talk about bumping heads with Din Djarin. "There have also been plenty of moments when there's you know, Din Djarin and me [are in a scene] and we’re talking and then close proximity, and then we just bonked helmets and so immediately it's like Three Stooges. I have so much fun though, especially when I'm doing scenes with this green guy. And it's his coverage, and they’re shooting and it’s so important because we're shooting Grogu, and he’s a puppet." And what does she do with the Grogu puppet? "So I just have him like sing songs and type in likes that he couldn’t be saying, that he’s not really saying, and I'm not worried about messing up a real actor." And honestly, this just makes her return as the Armorer that much cooler.
The final episodes of The Mandalorian Season 3 drop on April 12 and April 19 on Disney+.