Natalie Portman, known for portraying Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy directed by George Lucas, is interested in returning to the franchise.
Up until the release of the Disney sequel trilogy, which included episodes VIII, The Force Awakens (2015), VIII, The Last Jedi (2017), and IX, The Rise of Skywalker, the prequels were notoriously bashed by the general fanbase. What’s worse, many of the actors, including Portman and co-stars Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor, known for playing Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, respectively, claimed that the films almost ruined their careers.
However, times have changed, and fans have been greatly supporting the prequel trilogy, the actors, and their characters more than ever before. As a result, Christensen and McGregor have resurfaced for the live-action series Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022), and even other actors like Ahmed Best (Jar-Jar Binks) had a cameo as a powerful Jedi in season 3 of The Mandalorian (2019).
Although Portman, who hasn’t done anything related to Star Wars since episode III, Revenge of the Sith (2005), has expressed a desire to come back, she told GQ that “no one’s ever asked me to return.”
Padmé Amidala, Portman’s character, is the wife of Anakin Skywalker, who dies in childbirth delivering Luke and Leia, her twin children who later go on to stop their father from taking over the galaxy.
Given that so much of the new Disney Star Wars canon focuses on everything that occurs after the events of episode III, there really isn’t much room for Portman to exist.
Throughout the course of the award-winning Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, the character of Padmé is voiced by Catherine Taber, who also voices the Twi’lek orphan Mission Vao in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
While discussing her Oscar-winning role in Black Swan (2010) and her performance as Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie (2016), she also recalled to GQ that Taika Waititi, the director of Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), actually forgot she was even in a Star Wars film.
In her words, she said “he says he did ’cause he like asked me if I wanted to be in a Star Wars movie and I was like, I was…I thought he was joking…and then afterwards he said in some interview that he was like cringing afterwards.”
During an interview with Rolling Stone, Waititi, 47, came clean about the slip-up after discussing working together again with Portman on the fourth movie in the Thor series.
Portman’s latest film, May December (2023), premiered for the first time at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.