As Ahsoka Tano and friends prepare to return to the Star Wars universe for Season 2, one familiar face will not be in a galaxy far, far away.
Deadline confirms that Claudia Black, who played Nightsister Klothow in Season 1 of Ahsoka on Disney+, is not returning to the show after she revealed that she “had to bow out” for the sophomore season of the Dave Filoni series, explaining that the pay was not enough for her to be away from home for filming.
“Well, I’m going to be transparent,” she prefaced to Bleeding Cool. “They picked up Season 2, picked me up with it, and then Disney, which is structuring things differently these days, could not pay me what I needed to be paid as a single mother to keep all my responsibilities going at home in Los Angeles, because they were filming in London. It was not something that they could make happen, and therefore, I had to bow out for Season 2.” Lucasfilm had no comment.
Black admitted the decision “was very sad for me,” adding, “I sent an email to Dave Filoni thanking him, and I said, ‘What a ride!’ Everyone like me who grew up in the 70s and 80s has always been into the Star Wars universe, and it’s a very playful environment to work in,” added Black. “I’m grateful that I got to be in that universe, lovely people, lovely directors, interesting to work on ‘The Volume.’”
In Season 1 of Ahsoka, which debuted in 2023, Black played one of three Dathmiri Nightsisters of Peridia (including Jeryl Prescott Gallien and Jane Edwina Seymour), a trio of witches who offer their dark magic to Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) after he awakens them from an ancient slumber.
Calling the set a “fun, playful space to be in,” Black said, “It’s fun to do something that was relatable to my younger son, who was passionate about The Clone Wars, which was the new iteration for his generation.”
“When he heard me talking about it, we signed serious NDAs, and when he had me talking about it only took one thing. You would have been the same in the background,” she continued. “He was like, ‘Are you talking about the Nightsisters? What’s the show?’ He heard one little thing, and he was like, ‘I know exactly who she’s talking about,’ so it was fun to go into and do something relatable with him. but very sad to not be able to continue that at the end of the day. They call it ‘show business’ for a reason. It’s like 90 percent business and 10 percent show. They could not, sadly, support a single mom, and I’m very sad about that, but I also understand market forces being what they are, and the very delicate time in the business to even be able to afford to make anything at all. We all had to do our sums and move on.”
During the show’s Star Wars Celebration panel in April, Filoni teased that Season 2 was about to go into production.
