The Acolyte's Amandla Stenberg explains anime inspiration
The Acolyte's Amanda Stenberg has weighed in on the anime references for her character Mae.
Created by Russian Doll's Leslye Headland, The Acolyte follows Jedi master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) investigating a series of mysteries with his former Padawan learner Osha (Stenberg, who also plays Osha's sister Mae).
Speaking about Mae as being Osha's darker side, Stenberg discussed with Digital Spy the anime references behind the character.
"We definitely thought about all sorts of references and anime references too when we thought about character design," she said.
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"One of my favourite manga artists is Junji Ito and so I feel like he inspires me often even when I don't intend for it to happen," she continued.
Stenberg also shared that Headland asked the crew to watch Kill Bill as a reference, with the actor taking assassin character Gogo Yubari as a model for Mae.
"We also reference Kill Bill often as one of our touchstones a lot, and Leslye showed Kill Bill to the whole crew when we started filming," she said. "I think Kill Bill has some hardcore anime references too, so it's probably like a trickle-down effect from that.
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"I thought about different assassin archetypes and one of my favourite ones was Gogo from that film.
"I loved how there's a femininity and girlishness to her while also being, well, a murderer. And I just thought that would be a fun way to play the role and a character that I was much more interested in seeing."
The Acolyte also stars Carrie-Anne Moss, Jodie Turner-Smith, Manny Jacinto, Charlie Barnett and Dafne Keen.
The Acolyte is streaming exclusively on Disney+ from June 4.
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