How Dafne Keen's Lightsaber Training for The Acolyte Led to a Hotel Evacuation: 'It Was Embarrassing'

Dafne Keen takes her Jedi training very seriously.

While preparing for her role as Jecki—the half-human, half-Theelin disciple of Master Solo—in the new Disney+ series, AcolyteThe 19-year-old actress recalled the moment she accidentally set off the fire alarm while practicing her lightsaber moves for the role.

“I stayed in a hotel,” she said Entertainment Weekly. “I was a minor, so I stayed in a hotel, and my chaperone was in another room, and I would go to train in the hotel gym. The hotel gym was quite low. It didn’t have high ceilings, and I was what you were doing above your head , and I set off the fire alarm.”

“The whole hotel started ‘BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!'” she recalled. “And then they evacuated the whole hotel.”

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Dafne Keen on ‘The Acolyte’.

Christian Black/Lucasfilm Ltd.

As guests waited outside for the all-clear to return to their rooms, the staff discovered that Keen was responsible for the disturbance.

“I was standing outside with my cane and they said, ‘It happened in the gym,'” she continued. When they looked at the CCTV footage in the gym, Keen could be seen waving a stick above her head as she practiced with her makeshift lightsaber.

– I was with them – she laughed. “They were like, ‘You can’t.’ I didn’t get kicked out, but they said, ‘Can you just be careful?’ It was embarrassing. I said, ‘Guys, I can’t tell you this yet, but in two years this will make sense. I promise you I’m not just someone who likes to play with sticks.'”

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Acolyte is the fourth spinoff series that expands the lore of the iconic space opera franchise. New additions to Star Wars the world beyond the film began with the critically acclaimed series The Mandalorian in 2019, followed by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Andorra in 2022

The series, which also stars Manny Jacinto, Amandla Stenberg, Charlie Barnett, Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Dean Charles-Chapman and Carrie-Anne Moss, takes place roughly a century after the events of 1999. Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.

Keen isn’t the only actress to talk about the training they went through to become fluent in Jedi combat.

Amandla Stenberg in ‘The Acolyte’.

Christian Black / Lucasfilm Ltd.

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Speaking to PEOPLE earlier this month, Stenberg — who plays former Padawan Mae — likened the process to “death by 1,000 cuts.”

“Repeating the same movements over and over again until the foundation is really strong,” she explained. “We started by just following the lines on the cardboard box that were in the X and the square, so I could get the angle of my knife cuts right. And I just do really basic exercises, so I can get the right balance in my body and really just know how to use it right.”

Once Bodies Bodies Bodies star had a solid foundation, training began to include stunt choreography, which she said felt like “rehearsing a dance move over and over again.”

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Acolyte premieres with two episodes June 4 on Disney+. New episodes will then be released every Tuesday.

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Source: HIS Education