Daisy Ridley Recalls Director J.J. Abrams’ Advice After Star Wars Casting: “This Is a Religion for People”

Daisy Ridley remembered director J.J Abrams’ words of knowledge following her spreading in 2015’s The Pressure Awakens, claiming today that he informed her to “understand the scale” of the movie franchise business prior to approving the lead duty.

Ridley played lead character Rey in The Pressure Awakens, The Last Jedi (2017) and The Surge of Skywalker (2019 ), leading the Star Wars movies via their very first years complying with Disney’s purchase of the George Lucas world.

“This not a role in a movie,” Ridley remembered Abrams informing her in a brand-new meeting with Inverse.“This is a religion for people. It changes things on a level that is inconceivable.”

Abrams, Ridley claims, was right: Star Wars transformed her life, introducing her condition as a celeb and pressing her to the leading edge of a very enthusiastic follower base.

“For friends and family, or any people who see something in a slightly different way than you do, there’s this projection of you, and you in that world, and how it feels to do this and that,” she claimed. “And you’re like, ‘Well, actually, I’m just a human being, separate from that.’ It’s quite this wrestle of the reality and the fantasy that’s often projected onto you.”

Ridley claimed the anxiety came with her swiftly.“When all the craziness was going on, I was like, ‘I’m good. I’m good. I’m coping fine. Everything’s fine.’ And I was fine, for the most part. But I think what I was really grappling with was that it was my normal, but it was not normal to other people.”

Her anxiety quickly shown up literally, and by the time The Last Jedi got to cinemas, Ridley had actually established openings in her digestive tract wall surface. “My body was just fucked up,” she informed GQ in 2019. “I got tests done and it turned out my body was taking in no nutrients. I was just a little skeleton and I was just so tired. I was becoming a ghost.”

Ridley took a 6 month break prior to starting shooting The Surge of Skywalker, which assisted her recoup. After that, the actual end took place: “After the last Star Wars came out and everything was quiet, I was like, ‘What the fuck?’” Ridley claimed.“I was grieving.”

The experience inevitably took years to procedure, and was assisted by the pandemic that began 2 years after Skywalker. “Having to sit in lockdown was incredibly helpful, in a way I hadn’t anticipated,” Ridley claimed. “I realized there was a lot that I hadn’t processed properly.”