Stephens, who’s been growing his dreadlocks for seven years, told interviewer Shehab Khan that while he had successfully hidden his locks away under a rebel helmet during his brief appearance in Rogue One, Andor producers were adamant he cut off his distinctive hair. “In Rogue One, I’m wearing a helmet the whole time. So I was like, ‘Yeah I’ve got locks but who cares, just put me in a helmet [again],'” Stephens recalls. He then quoted an unnamed member of the production team as telling him, “‘We’re going to be training so we’re going to need you in traditional army attire, including your hair. And if you have locks, I don’t think it’d be realistic.'”
It was that last word that truly turned the actor against a flashback return for his late character. “I was like, ‘You’re talking about an intergalactic space war with giant slugs and swords made of light, and you’re worried about a soldier having dreadlocks?’ On principle, the cognitive dissonance was too difficult to handle. The idea that someone would watch and say ‘Oh, well he’s got dreadlocks so it’s obviously not real’—what is going on? It’s absolutely insane.”
Stephens, most recently seen in Paramount+ series The Ex-Wife, never explicitly mentions race in the exchange, but Star Wars fans no doubt recall the racist outcry that greeted John Boyega’s casting as former stormtrooper turned rebel Finn in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And Boyega himself has been unsparing about the franchise’s approach to characters of color. Stephens, for his part, has few regrets for missing out on a return to the Star Wars universe. For one thing, he told Khan that he was offered “fuck all” to reprise his role.
And for another, it’s not like the Star Wars universe lacks people and beings with all manner of hairstyles (or whatever Bib Fortuna has on his head). In their article on the controversy, IGN helpfully points to Clone Wars‘ Jedi Master Quinlan Vos as an example of a Black man whose dreadlocks didn’t shatter anyone’s illusions.
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