‘Are You F*cking Joking?’ Thandiwe Newton Blasts Star Wars for Killing Off ‘First Black Woman to Ever Have a Real Role’ in Series

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Thandiwe Newton thinks Star Wars made a “big, big mistake” by killing off her character in 2018’s Solo. 

“You don’t kill off the first Black woman to ever have a real role in a Star Wars movie,” Newton told Inverse. “Like, are you fucking joking?”

The Westworld star, who played Val in Solo: A Star Wars Story, said that she was “disappointed” in the franchise for killing off her character, especially as she did not die in the original script.

“It happened during filming. And it was much more just to do with the time we had to do the scenes,” she added. “It’s much easier just to have me die than it is to have me fall into a vacuum of space so I can come back sometime.”

Newton went on to say that in the original script, Val falls into space as a result of an explosion, but because “you don’t know where she’s gone,” she could have returned “at some point.”

“I remembered at the time thinking, ‘This is a big, big mistake,’” she revealed, pointing to the lack of diversity throughout the entire space saga.

Newton’s criticism comes after Star Wars’ John Boyega shared the difficulties he faced while working on the Disney owned franchise as a Black man.

“You get yourself involved in projects and you’re not necessarily going to like everything,” Boyega said in a 2020 interview with British GQ. “What I would say to Disney is do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up.”