Ahsoka star Rosario Dawson reveals the challenges in bringing the titular Jedi outcast's lightsaber combat to life. Unlike most Jedi Knights, Ahsoka Tano wields two modified lightsabers, employing a unique dueling style in the Star Wars galaxy. As such, this provided an exciting opportunity for her live-action debut (while requiring lots of training on Dawson's part).
As revealed in Entertainment Weekly's podcast The Dagobah Dispatch, Rosario Dawson describes the intense lightsaber training she underwent to make sure Ahsoka's unique physicality and fighting style looked just as good in live-action as it does in animation, be it her appearances in The Clone Wars or Star Wars Rebels:
"Doing two hours a day, seven days a week, was pretty intense, and then you add on when we were actually filming and doing these different battles and having to continue to study it. She is ambidextrous....That was just a lot to kind of own. She's so fierce from the very beginning...It was never a question about whether she was capable. She meets every single match just so head on. There's no hesitancy from her whatsoever, and that's really different from someone who's learning martial arts in their 40s who's trying to protect their face."
It certainly seems as though the months of work Dawson has put in to make her ongoing depiction of the former Jedi as strong as possible will pay off, including when Ahsoka ignites her impressive white-bladed lightsabers.
Why Ahsoka's Lightsaber Style Is So Difficult To Learn
As Dawson notes in the podcast, Ahsoka is ambidextrous, having wielded two lightsabers with equal dominance ever since she was a Padawan apprenticed to Anakin Skywalker. While her lightsaber blades may have changed colors from green to blue and finally to white in the current Mandaloran-era, she's always had two smaller shoto lightsabers. Likewise, the shoto style is unique in that it favors a rare backhanded reverse grip for more varied defensive counters.
Keeping the lightsabers themselves in mind and Ahsoka's prior skill in the animated Star Wars series, Dawson's training was likely more involved and complex than other actors have likely gone through. For example, Ahsoka's dueling style is more layered than Obi-Wan Kenobi's. While actor Ewan McGregor indeed went through intense training for the prequel trilogy and his own Obi-Wan Kenobi series (which very much paid off), he only had to be concerned with choreography for one lightsaber and a more traditional grip.
At any rate, the dedication and months of training Rosario Dawson has undergone is a very exciting sign for the upcoming Ahsoka series. As was seen with her initial live-action debut in The Mandalorian season 2, it looks as though Dawson's portrayal of Ahsoka can only improve, continuing to honor and be faithful to the character first introduced in animated form. Ahsoka is set to begin streaming this August on Disney+.
Source: Entertainment Weekly