Back in April of 2010, I was not a Matt Smith fan. To be clear: I had not seen him in anything yet and he was cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who and I wasn’t too keen on David Tennant leaving. 15 years later, he’s my favorite.
Since his role as The Doctor, Smith has turned a little more villainous with his work. Which now will include a villain in the upcoming Shawn Levy film Star Wars: Starfighter opposite his Lost River director Ryan Gosling. The role comes after he was originally supposed to star in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker reportedly as a younger version of Palpatine. That obviously did not happen.
But the role in Starfighter has me excited because I love when Smith gets to be a little bit villainous with his roles. Sure, Matt Smith as a good guy is when I fell in love with him but that’s not really where he shines. He’s played some absolutely horrible men and if you have ever had the pleasure of meeting Matt Smith, you know that he’s an absolute sweetheart. So it is fun to watch him go a bit darker with his roles.
We don’t know who he’s playing yet but seeing Smith and Gosling starring opposite each other is going to be fun! I just hope that he gets to really be that special kind of Star Wars level of evil with this role.
Look, the man has played Patrick Bateman in American Psycho: The Musical. He knows how to lean into the darkness of a character and I think that’s going to be really fun to explore in the world of Star Wars and its history of villains.
Matt Smith has played some bad guys
It is almost as if Smith finished Doctor Who and said “okay moving on” and left the good guys behind him. Not that it hasn’t been fun. I do love seeing him go a little darker and if that means watching Morbius just to see Matt Smith dancing around shirtless, so be it. But it is funny that he constantly keeps getting the villain label now.
After this, it’d be kind of nice if he got to star in a romantic comedy or something but I do think it is fun to watch movies and television shows where Smith plays a bad guy, especially since I do love him. It makes it very fun to love/hate his characters. Do I make excuses for Daemon on House of the Dragon? Absolutely because I want Smith to be a good guy in my heart even if his characters are kind of the opposite of that.
So whatever happens with Star Wars, I am glad they’ve redeemed him after all this time and hopefully this time around, they won’t end up cutting him out again and making me even angrier than I already was trying to watch that movie. I’ll never let The Rise of Skywalker forget it.
(featured image: HBO)
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
