Star Wars: Leslye Headland teases her Disney+ project is set in little-seen ‘pocket of the timeline’

The Star Wars universe continues to expand in the Disney era in a number of ways, from those we know a good bit about (the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series, for example) to things we know very little about. There are a number of vague, developing projects in the latter category at the moment, but one of the most exciting is the upcoming Disney+ project from Russian Doll writer/director Lesley Headland.

When the project was announced back in the spring, all we knew was that we could expect a "female-centric" series from a "different part of the timeline." Now, Headland herself has shed just a tiny bit more light on the series, as well as her approach to Star Wars storytelling in general. 

In a wide-ranging new interview with Fantastic Frankey last week that touched on everything from her breakthrough work like Bachelorette to her work on Russian Doll, Headland said that Star Wars has always been a "dream project" for her. When it came to her Disney+ series in particular, though, she could offer only vague teases. 

“I would say it’s in a pocket of the universe and a pocket of the timeline that we don’t know much about,” she said. “That’s what I can say.”

Headland's arrival in the Star Wars sphere was exciting for a number of reasons when her series was first announced, as she both joined a short-but-growing list of women directing live-action projects in a galaxy far, far away and got an opportunity to bring her unique approach to genre storytelling to the franchise. She also has an opportunity, in the age of The Mandalorian, to lead a new era of storytelling for female characters in the franchise after the sequel trilogy. With that in mind, though, Headland was also quick to note that she sees her project as having something for everyone.

“Just because my show is technically, yes, ‘female-centric’, meaning it centers around a female protagonist, I don’t think that necessarily excludes men from that space,” Headland said. “I relate to male characters all the time. I root for Mando. I root for Luke… An inclusive space means an inclusive space. But at the same time, I think that just because something has a female protagonist doesn’t necessarily mean it’s only for women.”

Earlier in the same interview, Headland described Star Wars as a bit like a "religion," and even extended the metaphor to compare Rian Johnson's work on The Last Jedi to a kind of Reformation of the lore. With that metaphor in mind, she also tried to describe the approach she's bringing to her own Star Wars work. 

"I like to think of my show as a tent revival. You can come over if you want to," she said. "We’re going to be talking about some cool stuff. There’s going to be some things we haven’t discussed in canon yet. There are going to be some characters you don’t know about. I would love you to join us. I would love you to be interested in it. If it’s not your thing, the cool thing about Star Wars right now is there’s so much you can align yourself with and get invested in, but if you don’t like it, that’s fine.”

You can check the full interview over at the Fantastic Frankey YouTube channel. Headland's Star Wars series does not yet have a release date.