Adam Driver & Steven Soderbergh Had a Kylo Ren Prequel. Disney Said ‘Nah.’

Adam Driver and Steven Soderbergh spent two years building a Kylo Ren movie. They had a script they loved. Then Disney said no, and Driver says that's the end of it.

The conversation started with comedy. Rich called "Kylo Ren Undercover" outstanding, the sketch where Driver goes undercover as Kylo Ren and asks stormtroopers on their lunch break what they think of Kylo Ren. Did Driver need to be talked into it?

Not at all, Driver said. The writers are so good that it was a no-brainer. He shared one detail from behind the scenes: for the first sketch, they shipped in the real costume. For the follow-up, "they had kind of like one you get at a Halloween store."

Then Rich got serious. Is Driver done playing Kylo Ren?

"It's over," Driver said. "No more Star Wars. We tried. We tried to do one more."

The response, Driver said, was that the character is dead. Rich pushed back, pointing out that in Star Wars you can make anything up. After all, Darth Vader turned out to be somebody's father, and that came out of nowhere.

Driver agreed, and revealed how far the project went. "Soderbergh was going to do it. Steven Soderbergh," Driver said. "We worked on it for a few years, really in earnest for two years. We got a script together that was really good with Scott Burns and Rebecca Blunt and Soderbergh and I."

"That's a dream team," Rich said.

"It was awesome. It was really cool," Driver said. "But you know, I don't get to decide."

Could someone resurrect it someday? "If they wanted to, fine, but it's not our call," Driver said. "I think the ship has sailed, though."

What surprised him was how fans reacted. "I didn't expect it was going to be billboards and people flying planes over Disney and things like that," he said. "That was pretty cool."

Rich asked whether anyone has ever been genuinely angry with Driver over what his character did. Driver said nobody was ever seriously angry, though people have joked about it, including at the Tonys once. He admitted that at the premiere he was anticipating people would be upset, and when it was over it seemed okay.

As Rich pointed out, Driver didn't write any of it. "I didn't write it," Driver said. "I just showed up. They told me to stick him."

Driver also described how Soderbergh planned to make the movie. The idea was to shoot it cheaply, not in a way that would look bad, but in a way that was efficient. Rich called Soderbergh the king of shooting something, editing it, and showing it to you the next day.

That's exactly right, according to Driver. Soderbergh's sets often wrap by noon or 1 o'clock. That evening, Soderbergh is at the hotel bar editing on a laptop, and "anybody in the hotel that we were staying in could just come by and see what he's editing." By the end of the first week, Driver said, Soderbergh had about 30 minutes of the movie.

Because Soderbergh handles so many roles himself, Driver explained, all the conversations that normally happen between the camera team and the director happen inside his head. He'll stop a scene mid-take once he has what he needs. "The speed of the set is so fast."

"He's one of the most brilliant people I've ever met," Rich said.

Driver agreed. "He's incredible."

Rich has his own Soderbergh story. Back when the show was still a podcast, Soderbergh agreed to review a Super Bowl broadcast start to finish as a director, commercials included. Rich called it one of the greatest things ever, because Soderbergh "looks at things from a completely different point of view."

So has Driver ever revealed the plot of the movie that never was?

"No, no," Driver said. Does he want to? "I think I'll just hold on to it and then die with it."

"That sounds so final," Rich said.