From “Star Wars” Superfan to Villain: Jonny Coyne on Playing Lord Janu Coin in “The Mandalorian and Grogu”
At 18 years of age, Londoner Jonny Coyne says he knew, when he saw the first Star Wars movie, that he was part of an “extraordinary” moviegoing phenomenon. “There were lines around the block because there was so much buzz about this joyous, thrill ride of a space movie. There was nothing else like it.” What Coyne couldn’t have known at the time is that nearly half a century later, his name would be re-purposed by director Jon Favreau to christen an evil warlord in Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. “That just blows my mind,” he says. “Regardless of what people may think of me as an actor, or my performance, or my part in this whole canon of the Star Wars world, they got my name in the movie and, you know, that’s enough for me.”
Coyne, who studied acting at London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, has portrayed a rich assortment of bad guys in projects including The Blacklist, Alcatraz, Preacher, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, opposite Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman. Seven years earlier, Favreau cast him to play an unnamed warlord in The Mandalorian TV series. The writer-director took a liking to Coyne and decided to name his character Lord Janu Coin. The rest is intergalactic villainy history.
Speaking from his home in Los Angeles, Coyne expounds on the joys of playing the bad guy, breaks down Star Wars‘ secret “rules” of costume design, and explains why he loves being directed by an actor like Jon Favreau.
In Mandalorian and Grogu, you play the heavy, Lord Janu Coin, and you do it with great gusto. Do you like being someone so powerful and evil?
I’ve always loved playing the bad guy to various degrees, from mean-spirited all the way to downright evil. One of my favorite incarnations was Allfather D’Aronique from the Preacher series.
I got to play the heaviest of heavies, wearing this giant [fat] suit, and I had a giant goiter, and all the makeup that goes with it, eating pie in front of everybody. For me, there’s never any downside to playing a bad guy. But I have played the occasional good guy!
To bring Lord Janu to life, did you draw on some part of your own personality or…?
I understand where you’re coming from, but we’re not trained like that at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. There was no investigation into where you get your characters from. We just kind of picked it up as we went along. Not Meisner, not the Method, not Stanislavsky, nothing like that. We concentrated on being playful, on improvisation, very little to do with “sense memory.” I don’t even know what that means.
Unlike many American actors who like to construct a backstory for their characters…
For Lord Janu, I genuinely had nothing to draw on, apart from imagination. That’s where the fun is.
Well, it works because you have this talent for radiating a kind of fearsome authority.
It’s about how people react to you. The king could be a dumbass. He could be fey and slight and weak, but if people still bow to him, his aura of kingliness is played by the others.
People bowing and scraping…
Right. It’s not so hard to play the heavy if everybody around you is quivering a little bit.
What was it like doing scenes with “Mando” in terms of the dialogue, which is ultimately voiced by Pedro Pascal? Did “Mando” respond to you in real time?
Absolutely. I think we’re sort of skating around the story that Brendan Wayne is the Mandalorian most of the time, and he gets a proper billing for it as well. Brendan knows all the lines. He does all the lines. He acts it out exactly as, I guess, Pedro [is expected] to voice it, but make no mistake: He’s not just a guy in a costume standing in front of me doing nothing. Brendan’s absolutely in the moment, giving a proper acting performance. There just happens to be a f***ing helmet on him.
There’s a nice villainous touch in your back-office…
My lair.
You keep a parrot in a cage.
I had a little scene with this gorgeous parrot, and the guys controlling him, they kept him alive, in between scenes. Even when the camera’s not rolling. You’d walk past the parrot and give him a look, and it’ll just go [flapping his hands like wings.] These guys are on it all the time.
Shakespeare says, “The clothes make the man.” Did you enjoy getting suited up as Commander Coin?
Oh yeah. They had a master tailor designing clothes for my weird little body to look beautiful in. And there are apparently Star Wars rules that I didn’t know existed.
Like what?
There can never be zippers to be seen; there are no buttons to be seen. And for this one, my waist is way higher than I’d like it to be, so there are rules about that as well.
Wearing your splendid finery, you and your entourage show up at this coliseum to watch Rotta the Hutt, your captive, fight off monsters. When he wins, you break your promise to let him go by proclaiming, “You are free… free to die!” It must have been fun to reign supreme at a big event like this.
It’s an actor’s dream to be the center of attention in a coliseum amongst all the dignitaries.
The arena was a physical set rather than a virtual “LED Volume?”
Yeah, it was a huge soundstage in Manhattan Beach, real space, real dimensions, about the size of an actual coliseum. And there were about 100 guys jeering, cheering, and giving that scene the energy it requires. Then, of course, they were stitched into the empty pockets of the CGI world.
The Mandalorian and Grogu director Jon Favreau started his career as an actor, starring in cult classic Rudy and his indie hit Swingers. What was it like to be directed by him?
Because Jon’s an actor, he knows how to deal with actors and all our sad frailties and insecurities. He knows how to pick you up. He knows how to guide you. I remember saying to him early on, “I tend to do too much. I’ve got eyeballs that are this big, and they roll all over the place, so you’ve got to contain me a little bit, or I will look ridiculous.” And he said, “Don’t worry, Jonny, I’m going to look after you.”
He had your back.
Jon made you feel like you were a king out there, which is just what you want from your director.
You spend much of your time in Los Angeles, which has suffered from runaway production over the past few years. Were you happy to see Mandalorian and Grogu being made in your adopted hometown?
The show saved my bacon in so many ways because when everybody else was complaining that there was no work, I had a job to go to, and a great job at that. In terms of status and self-esteem, I lived on that for a good year and a half because I knew this film would be coming out. In that way, I was sort of protected from the lack of work that’s happening out here. To be honest, I was very lucky.”
The Mandalorian and Grogu is in theaters now.
Featured image: (L-R): Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season three, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
