Ming-Na Wen talks about her mercenary Mandalorian character

Disney+ — Disney’s shiny-new streaming service — will go live in a couple of days. It’s then that The Mandalorian, the first-ever live-action Star Wars TV show, will make its debut.

To tell the story of a bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal) making his way after the fall of the Galactic Empire, showrunner/creator Jon Favreau has assembled a stellar cast that includes Gina Carano, Nick Nolte, Giancarlo Esposito, Carl Weathers, Werner Herzog and Taika Waititi as the voice of the droid IG-1. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. One actor we haven’t heard much about is is Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. star Ming-Na Wen, who talked about her character was to Vanity Fair.

Wen will play a “merciless sharpshooter” named Fennec Shand, who will cross paths with the Mandalorian towards the middle of season 1. Wen described her character as “tricky, and yet she’s able to maneuver and survive, and be stealthy—so very graceful and agile. I just love that whole image with the name.”

You can get a look at Shand in the new teaser for the show, below:

So is Shand a good guy or a bad guy? Light Side or Dark Side? “Thinking that she’s a mercenary, it can go either way,” Wen said. “I think it remains to be seen. She is definitely someone who’s loyal to herself.”

Wen collaborated with the producers on the character, specifically her look. “At first, the idea was maybe just have her hair be loose, unkempt kind of thing,” she remembered. “And I thought, Well, she’s going to be wearing a helmet and she’s this stealth assassin.”

"How great would it be if her hair has a bit of the fennec fox architecture to it? So the hairstylist came up with this great braiding system, that just gives an idea of these triangular points. Like her ears."

The costuming, too, was important to getting the character right. “The designer, Joseph [Porro,] came up with this amazing outfit that I fell in love with right away. It’s black, but then there’s the fennec orange punch to it. So that’s kind of like her brand, I guess.”

And will Fennec have a cool weapon to go along with her badass look? “She has quite a few weapons because she’s a very skilled fighter. Just her body is a weapon in and of itself. And she does carry…a big, big gun. A big boy.”

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I can’t wait to see how the Fennec and the Mandalorian mix it up. The Mandalorian premieres on November 12, only on Disney+.

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