There are people who say it all with just a look. An actress like Dafne Keen masters the art of subtlety, the power to convey everything, with eyes capable of expressing strength, vulnerability, rage and power. Her virtuosity has graced the screen since she was only eleven years old and has conquered the multiverses of Marvel and the Star Wars galaxy. She is a girl, an actress who in less than a decade has become a true action icon and a Hollywood star.
Interview taken from METAL Magazine issue 51. Adapted for the online version. Order your copy here.
The hero’s path is not what it used to be. Before, the warriors of comics, of distant planets, of adventure films were true scholars, chosen by the gods, marked by destiny. But that has changed in recent fiction. There are no longer those perfect superheroes, of immovable morality, no, now they are allowed to make mistakes, to go back on themselves, to doubt, to fool around with the dark side and even the most blatant violence. This is the type of character that Spanish actress Dafne Keen has been playing in her rise in Hollywood. Her debut as Laura (X-23) in James Mangold’s acclaimed “Logan” led her to stardom and to feature in such successful adaptations as “His Dark Materials” and “The Acolyte”. The latter is Leslye Headland’s series, a showcase of Daphne’s radical choices as she refuses to play moralistic, perfect people even as a jedi. That’s why this summer she has been back as Laura in “Deadpool & Wolverine”, topping the box office. Because Dafne is not afraid of challenges, she is a girl looking for true action, for raw emotions.
It’s been an intense summer, hasn’t it?
I’ll say! Well, it’s been an intense year, in general.
It really has, for you most of all. You’ve starred in the latest Star Wars series, “The Acolyte” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” which is already the highest grossing movie of the year and one of the highest grossing movies in history.
Put like that it sounds even more incredible.
This new Marvel movie has meant your reunion with Laura, the character you played in the movie Logan when you were very young. That was your first film role, did you expect to play her again?
No way, I didn’t expect to have this opportunity to revisit Laura! When Disney bought Twentieth Century Fox I thought that was the end, that I would never know anything about Laura. I felt a bit of hope when I saw that they had uploaded the “Deadpool” movies and the “Logan” movie to the Disney+ platform because that meant there was room for more adult-focused content and maybe it meant a small chance. When I heard they were going to do “Deadpool & Wolverine” it sounded like a really fun idea but I was still in the dark. Until they called me and then I was able to come back.
Tell me about that phone call when you were invited to become Laura again.
It was pretty anticlimactic (laughs). I was called first by my agent and then Shawn Levy via FaceTime. At that time my house was invaded by many friends of mine who were visiting me in Madrid. We still talked for quite a while and he told me the whole concept and pointed out that my scenes were with super iconic actors although he couldn’t tell me who they were. I spent months keeping the secret about my return as Laura. Still, I’ve really enjoyed keeping the secret, even though it’s cost me. Especially with industry peers who know you’re working but you can’t tell them what you’re working on. When they asked me, I would tell them I was shooting an indie film (laughs).
Well, that “indie film” is the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time…
Yes, that’s right! The other day I called Ryan Reynolds and we were both in shock.
The movie talks a lot about multiverses and I, personally, find it hard to place myself in the plots of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, is it the same for you?
Yes, I understand you. But I’ll clarify that my Laura is the same in “Logan” as in “Deadpool & Wolverine”, she’s not the other universe’s version!
And how did she get to the dimension where she’s trapped called The Void?
I want to believe that Laura was living with her friends, the children who managed to escape from Transigen. That she was very happy with them until she was captured and taken to that kind of cave with the other superheroes.
Laura was your first film role, you were only eleven years old. I imagine you experienced a very special reunion with the character seven years later.
Yes, it was really special, because I met a more mature Laura and I knew that now she understands how much love is worth. When she met Logan the only love she had received was from Gabriela, the nurse who helped her escape. At that time, she had not met someone of her own blood, she had been alone from the beginning. Gabriela loved her, but that love had arisen in a laboratory, where Gabriela cared for Laura and the latter was nothing more than an experiment. For that reason, Laura was a girl who accumulated a lot of rage and a lot of pain and Logan was the only one capable of understanding it. That’s why having him and then losing him is such an emotional sledgehammer for her. So, in “Deadpool & Wolverine” when she meets Logan again, it’s a second chance, even if it’s not the Logan she knew and just another version from another universe.
You were very young when you shot “Logan” and your role required you to get involved in a spiral of violence at a very, very young age. How did it manage to expose you to such brutal situations? It must have been quite a shock!
The whole team was very, very nice and very gentle with me. They explained everything to me very carefully and in the most harmless way. They would come up to me and say, “look now you are going to do this and that” and I would reply, come on, I have to decapitate him, right? Thank goodness I’m a very tough girl, something I inherited from my mother. There was a moment in the filming when we relaxed about it. There was even a time when Hugh [Jackman] went to apologise to my mother after shooting a scene where I was yelling at Logan in Spanish and he was telling me to go fuck myself. My mum laughed and told Hugh if he didn’t understand that Laura had insulted him by saying even worse things in Spanish (laughs). Everyone was super worried and my mum and I were super chilling!
I imagine you must have read a lot of comics to understand those complicated universes.
I was into superheroes long before I got into this. My mother was obsessed with Scarlet Witch, she loved the comics she starred in. Even though I was very little, when I heard they were casting a girl to play X-23 I read all the comics, I was obsessed. I love the comics starring Laura! When we actors play a superhero, they ask us if that’s the one we wanted to play and I know there are many other heroes I would have liked to play but I know that the one I can play best is Laura. Getting into her shoes is very easy for me because of the wild side that we both share, the same goes for the language. We both speak Spanish and have that Hispanic fierceness. That scene in “Logan” where I yell at Wolverine is inspired by those señoros yelling at each other from their cars on their way to work, stuck in a traffic jam on Paseo de La Castellana. I love all the Spanish lore (laughs).
Of course, many people don’t know that you are from Madrid.
Yes, I was born in Madrid and I grew up there. I lived for a few years in London when I was very little but my mother, being the queen that she is, said she was fed up with the weather and that she was coming back to Spain with me. And that’s where I lived until I went to film “Star Wars” when I was eighteen. I was a girl going to state school in La Latina.
Right now, it’s the festivities of La Paloma.
Oh, don’t tell me, I love that neighbourhood! Living in Madrid has helped me a lot to be able to perfectly combine my career with my student life. There, nobody believed that I was an actress because nobody thought it was possible for me to study in Madrid and work in Hollywood, and I don’t consider myself a Hollywood actress at all. At school I used to hear people say that I looked a lot like the girl from “Logan” or “His Dark Materials” but they never approached to tell me that I was me.
But “His Dark Materials” had three seasons, didn’t that affect your daily life as a student?
Yes, that project forced me to spend half a year in Wales and half a year in Madrid. I had teachers with me on set and they would send me all the homework I had to do. It was very difficult for me to keep up with my classmates because I was working ten hours a day. In primary school all that was easier, but when I started secondary school?
And what about the friendships you have made during these years in high school? Have you been able to keep them?
Yes, I have kept all my friends. And one of the things that makes me happiest is knowing that I never left my school or my home. I managed to keep a normal life, with colleagues, weekends in the village and all thanks entirely to my parents. They wanted me to have a normal childhood, and I have some really good friends! I recently went on a trip with a colleague in a very improvised way to Paris and we had a great time, coming home at 7am. It was a super crazy trip!
Until seven in the morning? But you’re only nineteen years old!
Yes (laughs). In Paris we really enjoyed visiting amazing cocktail bars. And I think that living in Spain has helped me to party in a very fun way because I think that in other places it’s not like that, in other places they drink until they burst, they drink scandalous amounts. And we don’t, we just want to have a good time. When I was a kid, I had a trick to get into discos. I don’t know if I should tell you. But when I went out at night in Madrid I put on an English accent and when I went out at night abroad, I put on a Spanish accent. And the security guards were so lazy that they let me in after five minutes of talking (laughs).
You’re a smart girl, Dafne Keen (laughs).
They’re little tricks (laughs).
If I’m doing my maths correctly, you must have graduated from secondary school last year, when you started shooting “The Acolyte”, the new Star Wars universe series, right?
That’s right, as soon as I graduated, I had to start shooting the series. The casting process was very quick, they called me to do an audition and soon after I was traveling to London to meet Leslye Headland, the director. It was a fairly straightforward process.
Your character is Jecki Lon, a Theelin-Human hybrid and the Padawan of Jedi Master Sol. Jecki’s appearance is very distinctive and very striking.
I was warned about Jecki’s appearance from the get-go. The director told me that this was going to be her race because it is her favourite race in the Star Wars universe. The team was very clear about what Jecki was going to look like. Once I saw my makeup it was mind-blowing, it was so crazy! I like to say that I brought a little detail to Jecki’s characterisation and that is the red mascara, which I came up with and the makeup guys loved it and we included it.
My earliest memory of Star Wars comes from the prequels. I saw “The Phantom Menace” on TV with my father and the rest at the cinema. Natalie Portman in that white outfit and a gun looked chic to me.
I also saw them with my father for the first time! We rented them at Blockbuster and I liked them so much that I became obsessed with them.
How did your father react when you told him you were going to be part of the Star Wars universe?
My father was more excited than I was! I remember we had a marathon of all the movies again. My dad asked me a lot of questions while I was filming the series, he wanted to know how we did everything. The set was very closed and everything was confidential and as I was seventeen years old I was always accompanied by a caregiver (I know it sounds absurd but it was like that) and the last day I asked her, please, to let my father come and he was able to come and we even played with the androids and saw some of the spaceships.
“The Acolyte” is the first Star Wars project to be directed and developed by a woman, Leslye Headland. I think that fact sets it apart from the rest of the products of this epic saga.
I am a big fan of Leslye and “Russian Doll”, the series she co-created with Natasha Lyonne. I also love her movie “Sleeping with Other People”. Leslye is one of the funniest, smartest and most talented people I know. And you’re right about what you say. I think “The Acolyte” is something very different from what we’ve seen so far and you can really feel Leslye’s love for this saga. I think that’s what made Leslye create characters beyond any established canon. She made us feel total and absolute creative freedom regarding the race and sexuality of our characters. It was wonderful to read a script that exuded so much freedom and so much creativity. There is nothing forced in the story, there is no diversity added for appearance’s sake. Leslye created the characters she wanted and cast the actors she wanted.
I think something very special about “The Acolyte” is that it shows a side of the Jedi that we’ve never seen before. The Jedi are like the police of the galaxy and always boast a moral rectitude that in this series cracks and we see them make mistakes and try to hide them with great desperation.
You are absolutely right. That is something that fascinated me very much. I think the best stories are those that swing between shades of grey and I also think that in these times we are living in, talking about corruption in a saga with so much projection is very important. The system is corrupt, and it is interesting to see how people move within their own ambiguity and face a darkness that we all carry within us.
The protagonist of the series is your Jedi master, Sol, played by Korean actor Lee Jung-jae, who spends the entire series paying the consequences of a terrible mistake he made in the past.
That’s right, all the characters are haunted by the ghosts of the past.
“I was into superheroes long before i got into this.”
I would like to take this opportunity to ask you about your mistakes and how you deal with them. What I would like to know is how you as an actress and a person feel about the mistakes you make in life.
I consider myself a perfectionist, very insecure and hard on myself. I think it is very important for all of us to realise that we have good parts and bad parts. Good deeds have always raised doubts in me because when I have been good, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was acting right in a genuine way or because I felt good about myself. One day, very overwhelmed, I asked my mother if I was a bad person because when I did something good I did it because I knew they were good. Then my mother told me to think about what the world would be like if everyone did good things, even if they didn’t do them in a genuine way, everything would be so much better! It doesn’t matter what your intention is, the important thing is that your actions are good and help others. You don’t have to be beating your conscience all day long, just do the right things.
For an actor, perfectionism can be a double-edged sword and cause you a lot of headaches, don’t you think?
It is because most of the time we actors have very little control over the projects in which we participate. A lot of times if a take goes wrong you have to put up with it and then see it later in the film. It’s a bit frustrating! That’s why I think it’s better not to think about it too much, to assume that sometimes there’s nothing to do. I try to control what I can, which are my lines and my things. A shoot can be unpredictable so the best thing to do is to relax and try to enjoy yourself because that way you can get the kind of performance I like: human and real. I think mistakes are beautiful and that’s why I’m trying to be less hard on myself.
How do you feel when you watch “Logan” or the TV show “His Dark Materials”, your first works?
What an interesting question! The other day I was talking about it with another actor friend who also started when he was a kid. I told him that I have a hard time watching recent projects but not the older ones. I can never watch one of my films or series objectively because I remember what we did the day we shot that scene, where we went to lunch, and the anecdotes that happened. It’s like watching mini summaries of my life. My most recent projects I prefer not to see them because I take a lot of flaws out of them but the old ones I do, they are like very special pieces of my life.
Full look PRADA.
Wool dress, earrings and necklaces CHANEL, boots BURBERRY.
Blazer, culotte, tights and shoes DIOR, top AMBER W SMITH, earrings SHAUN LEANE.
Coat BURBERRY, earrings SHAUN LEANE.
Wool dress, earrings and necklaces CHANEL, boots BURBERRY.
Turtleneck and skirt DIOR, boots BURBERRY, earrings SHAUN LEANE, necklace ALIGHIERI, sunglasses CHANEL.
Leather jumpsuit CHANEL, top GALVAN LONDON, boots BURBERRY, earrings SHAUN LEANE, necklace CHANEL.
Blazer DIOR, earrings SHAUN LEANE.