A former developer at Respawn Entertainment claimed that requests from them and several other team members to make Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order's protagonist female and/or Black were denied.
Nora Shramek, a lighting artist at Respawn who worked on Fallen Order, said that several employees advocated for a female and/or Black protagonist but were denied under the pretense that the game and the franchise as a whole had enough representation of those communities. "When I worked on [Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order], a LOT of devs wanted and advocated for the main character to be Black and/or a woman," Shramek said in a tweet. According to her, the reasons for the denial were that they "already have 2 black people in the game" and "Rey is a woman and we can't do that too."
Shramek explained that these decisions were made by those in charge at Respawn and not a result of an "evil EA" or "overly controlling Lucasfilm/Disney." "It was our team's game and yes, a few of the people with decision making power made choices," she said. Shramek also said the issue isn't with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order's white male protagonist Cal Keltis or his actor, Cameron Monaghan, but "about opportunity lost."
Along with the denial of a more diverse representative lead, Shramek also revealed apparent racist comments made by team members during production. She recounted one incident where someone said, "all the Black people need to have more glossy skin because Black people have more oily skin than other people." The comment was met with "dead shock on everyone's face," Shramek said. Although these were her experiences with the company, Shramek said she has heard from those still at Respawn that the company has improved in these areas and made some "changes" accordingly.
Accounts of racism within the franchise are nothing new. On numerous occasions, John Boyega called out Star Wars and Disney for writing POC characters poorly. "You get yourself involved in projects and you’re not necessarily going to like everything. [But] what I would say to Disney is do not bring out a black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side," Boyega said in 2020. "It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up."
"Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver," he added. "You knew what to do with these other people, but when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know fuck all. So what do you want me to say? What they want you to say is, 'I enjoyed being a part of it. It was a great experience...' Nah, nah, nah. I'll take that deal when it's a great experience. They gave all the nuance to Adam Driver, all the nuance to Daisy Ridley. Let's be honest. Daisy knows this. Adam knows this. Everybody knows. I'm not exposing anything."
Reportedly, his comments led to an invitation by Disney to have an open conversation with Boyega on the matter. "It was a very honest, a very transparent conversation," Boyega explained in a recent interview with THR. "There was a lot of explaining on their end in terms of the way they saw things. They gave me a chance also to explain what my experience was like." He added that he hoped his conversation would help with future representation in front and behind the camera in the films.
Source: Twitter via IGN