It seems like Hollywood is finally starting to get it. Not only were we already excited to find out that the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One, features a female heroine, but what the director has to say about the creation of her character is giving us faith that Hollywood is headed in the right direction, diversity-wise.
ICYMI, Rogue One‘s new main character, Jyn Erso, is everything we could possibly want in a female lead.
Despite the fact that Jyn is played by Felicity Jones, it turns out that the film’s director, Gareth Edwards, actually set out to create a character that wouldn’t be defined by her gender. As he puts it, the film’s writers wanted to make a character that was simply a hero—not a “female hero.”
“We tried to write Jyn as neither male nor female, as just a person,” Edwards told Vulture. “Obviously, she’s female, but even with the clothing, my goal with the costume department was to design clothes that I would wear as a guy on Halloween. She wouldn’t look feminine, and she wouldn’t look masculine—she’d be neutral. Jyn is a person who just happens to be a girl.”
Edwards also notes that John Knoll, who originally wrote Jyn Erso’s character, set out to create a hero his two daughters could look up to—AKA something a lot of sci-fi films are lacking.
Considering we’ve mostly seen straight, white, masculine heros from the Star Wars franchise thus far, Jyn Erso is a welcome change—and we’re hoping this is the push Hollywood needs to add even further gender diversity and strong female roles to other major films.