Andy Serkis Talks About “Supreme Leader Snoke”

By Reggie's Take on November 12, 2015

When Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters in December, Andy Serkis will be playing one of two performance-capture characters and in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly Serkis talks about his character, “Snoke”.

For the first time Serkis was able to talk more about his character of “Supreme Leader Snoke” in “The Force Awakens” with the people at Entertainment Weekly and were able to learn more about “Snoke”. From his visual appearance and why it couldn’t be done practically. Plus we learn a little about Snoke’s motivations, outlook, and his alignment with the Dark Side of the Force.

If you’re a huge Star Wars fan as I am and feel a bit frustrated with all of the secrecy surrounding the next Star Wars film, then your not alone. Andy Serkis shares that frustration for different reasons.

“It’s the first time I’ve been on set not yet knowing what the character’s gonna look like. I mean talk about secrecy!”

As filming went on Serkis and Abrams both evolved the look of Snoke based on Serkis’s performance alone.

“When we first started working on it, he had some rough notions of how Snoke was gonna look, but it really hadn’t been fully-formed and it almost came out of discussion and performance,”

Even after principle photography ended the character of “Snoke” under went even further changes that allowed Serkis to get a better look at the design of “Snoke” which prompted additional filming.

“We shot on set of course, and I was in the scenes I have with other actors, but the beauty of this process is you can go back and reiterate, keep informing and honing beats and moments. So J.J., after we shot last year, we’ve had a series of sessions where I’d be in London at The Imaginarium, my studio, while he’s been directing from L.A., and we’ve literally been creating further additions and iterations to the character. That’s been fascinating. And in the meantime I’ve been able to see the look and design of the character grow and change as the performances change. So it’s been really exciting in that respect.”

What does “Snoke” look like? Well unless your J.J. Abrams know one has a clue, but Serkis was able to provide some character details that may tell us something about “Snoke” and his agenda for the galaxy far, far away.

“He’s aware of what’s gone on, in the respect that he has been around and is aware of prior events. I think it’d be fair to say that he is aware of the past to a great degree. “Supreme Leader Snoke” is quite an enigmatic character, and strangely vulnerable at the same time as being quite powerful. Obviously he has a huge agenda. He has suffered a lot of damage. As I said, there is a strange vulnerability to him, which belies his true agenda, I suppose.”

What makes “Snoke” such a unique character that he had to be done with motion-capture instead of piratically?

“He is large. He appears tall. And also just the facial design – you couldn’t have gotten there with prosthetics. It’s too extreme. Without giving too much away at this point, he has a very distinctive, idiosyncratic bone structure and facial structure. You could never have done it in real life.”

Serkis has shed a bit more light on the leader of the “First Order”, but we will all have to wait and see just what is “Supreme Leader Snoke’s” agenda really is and what exactly the relationship is between “Snoke” and “Kylo Ren”. Are they trying to finish what the Empire could not or do they have totally different agendas?