Manny Jacinto Reveals Difficulty of Keeping The Acolyte Role Secret During Press Tour: It Was Literally Another Character
The Acolyte star Manny Jacinto, as agreed upon by the netizens, stole the show as Qimir in the latest Star Wars series. However, it was not so easy to keep the secret of his character during the rigorous press tour.
The Acolyte star Manny Jacinto admits struggling to keep character secrecy
Jacinto had to conceal the multiple secrets of his character during the global press tour. The Top Gun: Maverick star played Sith Lord in the series, however, there were more layers to his character that he had to work on.
Born and raised in Richmond, British Columbia but born in Manila, Jacinto now strikes out as one of Leslye Headland’s creations – The Acolyte. His Sith Lord captivated the audience whether masked or unmasked. As per The Hollywood Reporter, he saw it as a “three-tiered” character where he initially played Qimir then the masked and the unmasked Stranger.
However, maintaining character secrecy throughout global press tours became overwhelming for Jacinto with four difficult characters. Four because he saw this as an extension of his acting. Therefore, when faced with a press tour, he treated it like another character to play since Jacinto said to the outlet, he’s not a fan of press junkets and publicity naturally.
He said that “having to straight up lie to people’s faces, I was like, ‘Okay, what is my backstory? What am I doing here?’” The actor continued, “So it was literally another character that I had to play out of this three-tiered character that I had already just played on The Acolyte.” Consequently, to maintain this confidentiality around his character, Jacinto said he found himself making up stories about him.
Manny Jacinto’s narrow escape from spoiler leak of The Acolyte character
Jacinto did a lot of press with Dafne Keen and Charlie Barnett whose Jedi characters were killed by the Stranger in the show. He had to watch out for any potential spoiler leakage on his part.
At a Star Wars Celebration event, Keen and Barnett mistakenly spoke about Jacinto’s stunt work in order to praise him, however, it would have been a spoiler. Thus he had to manage it, or as he said, “These are her words, not mine, but Dafne said, ‘Manny is a stunt god.’ So I had to backtrack things.”
Of the various fan theories that come his way, Jacinto simply sighed saying, “Oh, God, all of these Easter eggs, theories and tidbits … I don’t know.”
Meanwhile, the Star Wars series The Acolyte features Manny Jacinto, Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-Jae, Carrie Anne Moss, Charlie Barnett, Dean-Charles Chapman, Joonas Suotamo, Dafne Keen, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Rebecca Henderson. It is currently streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
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