When The Mandalorian Season 3’s episode “The Pirate” aired on Disney+ in April 2023, it gave Star Wars fans something cool. Bo-Katan Kryze, played by Katee Sackhoff, finally shared a scene with Greef Karga, the sharp-tongued magistrate played by the late Carl Weathers. What we didn’t know at the time was that behind the scenes, things got a little too real for the cast. Speaking on The Sackhoff Show with The Mandalorian stunt double Brendan Wayne (the body double for Din Djarin), Sackhoff revealed that during the shoot, Carl Weathers looked her dead in the eye and said she was… “boring.”
“Do you remember that day on set when Carl told me that I was boring?” the clip starts. Wayne bursts into laughter and covers his face. “Yes! Yes,” he replies, turning red. Apollo Creed, Dillon from Predator and Action Jackson himself told Katee Sackhoff she was boring. But before you reach for your blaster, Sackhoff was quick to explain that the comment wasn’t an insult. It was a challenge.
During the scene, the Mandalorians all wore helmets and barely moved from their positions while Greef Karga gave a moving thank you speech. Turns out Weathers wanted more. “Speaking about moving in the suit,” Sackhoff said, “Carl was like, ‘So I would like to know what she feels in this scene.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And he was like, ‘More?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And he goes, ‘What you’re doing is boring.’ [Laughs] I was like, ‘Oh my God, Carl, let me get right on that.’”
Rather than sulk, Sackhoff got to work. She finished the scene (only nodding where appropriate) and immediately ran to showrunner Jon Favreau in a panic. “Am I boring?” she asked. He responded with “You’re fine.”
Sackhoff clarified that Weathers wasn’t calling her personality dull. He was talking about performance, the physicality, the energy, the subtle “movement” in both body and voice. “In my mind, I’m thinking, well, we can just… we can voice over it. I can change it in the booth if it’s not enough,” Sackhoff continued.
As someone who’s been voicing Bo-Katan since Star Wars: The Clone Wars in 2012 and Star Wars Rebels after that, Sackhoff admitted she was relying on ADR to fix any vocal issues later. But Weathers was pushing for something much deeper from the actor.
But she wasn’t the only one who got a stern talking to. Wayne confirmed that Weathers said something similar to him. “So, he told me, ‘It’s not enough anymore’. And I was like, ‘I’m sorry?’ He said, ‘It’s not enough. You have to evolve. All of you have to evolve. You can’t be sitting there being these stick figures for these men.’ And I was like, ‘What are we talking about Carl?'”
“That’s when I realised, ‘Oh, he’s not being mean. He wants to see this character’s physical evolution. That’s when I went, ‘Oh! I get it.’ He was just honest,” Wayne continued.
And those moments with Carl Weathers made both Katee Sackhoff and Brendan Wayne rethink how they were showing up for The Mandalorian scenes. Instead of being offended, they saw it for what it was: mentorship.
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