Mads Mikkelsen described his time working on the 2016 “Star Wars” prequel “Rogue One” while reflecting on his career with Variety, stating that the script was “surprisingly unfinished” during filming.
He added, “It kept changing. One would think that that was already done. I don’t think they ever locked a draft. I think they kept working on it and improvised and went back and reshot stuff and then came up with a better idea, which is kind of livable for a character like mine. I mean, I had my mission. I knew what it was, but it was obviously tricky for the two young heroes, not knowing exactly what they were carrying into a room of baggage.”
In the movie, Mikkelsen portrayed Galen Erso. Ben Mendelsohn played Orson Krennic, Donnie Yen played Chirrut Šmwe, Diego Luna played Cassian Andor, and Felicity Jones played Jyn Erso. The “Star Wars” anthology film, directed by Gareth Edwards, follows a group of insurgents as they set out to steal the Death Star’s blueprints.
He added that because the plot kept changing, it was especially challenging to re-shoot the scene in which he declares, “It must be destroyed,” while water pours down on him.
He explained in detail, “That was a brutal, I would say, day, but it was days, because there was a lot of changes in the story. We went back and forth, and it was raining. When you do artificial rain, it is almost impossible to do that in a long scene without having ice-cold water. So I was lying there, freezing to death, trying to keep my eyes open.”
Mikkelsen and co-star Daniel Craig were ordered to refrain from improvising while filming, and Craig was the only member of the ensemble who did not know how to play poker. The former said, “He was the only guy in that film who did not know how to play poker, and he ran away with $150 million of my dollars.”