Moses Ingram Made An Important Change To Reva's Look In Obi-Wan Kenobi
The circle is now complete: Years after the "Obi-Wan Kenobi" anthology film was essentially canceled and then reconfigured as a streaming series for Disney+, the show has officially snagged an Emmy nod for Outstanding Limited Or Anthology Series. It's a somewhat surprising turn of events; the in-betweenquel about Obi-Wan's years hiding out on Tatooine as a strange old hermit named Ben got a pretty mixed response from audiences, the chief complaint being you could really tell it was designed to be a film at one point. Still, there was a fair deal to like about the series, including Vivien Lyra Blair's performance as a precocious pre-teen Princess Leia and the subplot featuring a brand new character named Reva Sevander.
Played by Moses Ingram (herself already an Emmy nominee for "The Queen's Gambit"), Reva is introduced as being one of the lightsaber-wielding, dark side-powered Inquisitors tasked with hunting down any Jedi who survived Order 66. Of the lot, however, Reva seems especially determined to impress her boss, Darth Vader, and is the only one who knows his secret identity. In time, Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) puts the pieces together and discovers the truth — that Reva is actually a former Jedi Youngling who survived Vader's attack on the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Fueled by her desire for revenge, Reva does everything in her power to get closer to Vader in the hopes of killing him, only to find her way back to the light side in what I might argue is the best and certainly the most subversive part of the entire series.
Her performance wasn't the only important contribution Ingram made to "Obi-Wan Kenobi," either. In an interview with NME, she revealed that she requested Reva's original hairdo be changed to accommodate her natural locks, rather than wear a wig.
'It feels bigger than me'
I realize this isn't exactly breaking news, but "Star Wars" doesn't have a great track record when it comes to doing right by its Black actors. Billy Dee Williams charmed the world off its feet playing Lando Calrissian in the original trilogy, yet the best he could get in Disney's sequels was a slapdash subplot in "The Rise of Skywalker." Meanwhile, we've still no idea if Donald Glover will ever don his sexy cape again as a younger Lando after "Solo: A Star Wars Story" bombed at the box office, and John Boyega has been rightly outspoken about his grievances playing Finn in the franchise.
It seems the creatives at Disney and Lucasfilm learned their lessons after what happened with Boyega. In addition to Ewan McGregor denouncing racist jagoffs for attacking Moses Ingram online, Ingram told NME she was allowed to change Reva's original hairstyle. "Originally, the hair for Reva was doing something my hair doesn't do," she said, adding:
"I knew I was going to be in a position where a lot of kids are going to want to be Reva for Halloween. I don't want them to have to put on a wig because I put on a wig. I want them to be able to do what our hair does."
The fact that Reva is such an integral part of "Obi-Wan Kenobi" — both in terms of the story and its themes about healing from the traumas of the past in order to pursue a better future — only makes the character, and, by extension, Ingram's actions all the more significant. "I know it's going to mean a lot to a lot of people," she said. She later added:
"In a lot of ways it feels bigger than me and my personal feelings. It feels kind of too big to fathom, but I'm happy people will have someone who looks like them."