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WATCH: Daisy Ridley really gave her all for her Star Wars audition

March 31st, 2016 by Irwin Fletcher Comments

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Some of the toughest work that went into making Star Wars: The Force Awakens was casting the new generation of stars. Director J.J. Abrams and his producers went through thousands of aspiring actresses trying to find the perfect Rey. They found her in British newcomer Daisy Ridley.

Ahead of the film’s Blu-ray release, Disney has released a never-before-seen clip via BuzzFeed (via Squareeyedshowing Ridley’s powerful audition tape, which is part of the feature-length behind-the-scenes documentary The Secrets of the Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey. 

The scene which won Ridley the coveted role was the intense sequence where Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) uses his considerable Force powers to enter Rey’s mind and interrogate her.

In the clip, director Abrams describes what he was looking for when searching for the actress to play Rey: “What we were looking for was someone new. This character needed to be vulnerable and tough, sweet and terrified. And to find someone that no one knew who could do all these things took a lot of looking,” he explained.

“It wasn’t until we found Daisy that we just felt like she was capable of doing all of these things this character required.”

Abrams said he knew Ridley could pull off everything the character needed to do after witnessing her portraying a depth of struggle and vulnerability during her audition.

This video also gives us brief glimpses at concept art drawn for the character, before Daisy Ridley was cast. Watch the clip of Ridley’s audition below. The Force Awakens will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 18.

I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.