Star Wars almost looked very different.
It was previously reported that Jodie Foster was offered the role of Princess Leia in the sci-fi franchise but ultimately turned it down due to scheduling conflicts. During a Wednesday, January 17, appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, host Jimmy Fallon asked Foster, 61, “I saw this on the internet, you were offered the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars, is that true?”
“I was, yeah,” the actress replied. “They were going for a younger Princess Leia but I had a conflict. I was doing a Disney movie and I just didn’t want to pull out because I was already under contract. So, I didn’t do it and you know, they did an amazing job.”
Foster joked about the character’s iconic hairstyle, adding, “I don’t know how good I would have been. I might have had different hair, you know. I might have gone with a pineapple.”
The role of Princess Leia ultimately went to the late Carrie Fisher, who starred alongside Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford in the original Star Wars trilogy, released from 1977 to 1983. Fisher also appeared in two of the franchise’s later installments, Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017).
Foster’s missed opportunity certainly didn’t hinder her career in the slightest. Currently, she stars as detective Liz Danvers on season 4 of HBO’s anthology series True Detective: Night Country.
“It was an easy ‘yes’ but you never know, you know?” she told Fallon, 49, of accepting the role. “So I went and met with the director, Issa López, who’s the showrunner and wrote all the episodes. She just had such an incredible vision for the show that I just couldn’t do anything but jump on board.”
Foster added that while she was excited for the role, she requested a few changes to be made to the character. “The character, initially, was much younger and she was fresh from grief and she was kind of a mess and very emotional and I thought, ‘No,’” she explained. “So she really is awful. My Liz Danvers is awful. We call her Alaska Karen.”
The Oscar-winner also shouted out her costar Kali Reis who plays detective Evangeline Navarro. “You grow to love her despite her charade, in some ways,” she said of her own character, Liz. “The most important thing was I kind of configured the character to support the central character, who’s an indigenous woman, Kali Reis. Amazing actress.”
