Claudia Black’s (Farscape, Pitch Black) character Nightsister Klothow in Ahsoka will not be returning to the show for season two of the Dave Filoni (Star Wars Rebels, The Mandalorian) series, according to Deadline.
“Well, I’m going to be transparent,” she admitted 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 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 via Deadline.
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 very playful environment to work in,” added Black, according to Deadline. “I’m grateful that I got to be in that universe, lovely people, lovely directors, interesting to work on ‘The Volume.’”Deadline said in the first season of Ahsoka, Black portrayed one of the three Dathmiri Nightsisters of Peridea–alongside Jeryl Prescott Gallien (Resort to Love, Swamp Thing) and Jane Edwina Seymour (Husband, Wife and Their Lover, Lost in Tomorrow). This trio of witches was awakened from an ancient slumber and subsequently offered their dark magic to Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen).
Via Deadline, Black called the set a “fun, playful space to be in.” She added, “It’s fun to do something 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, according to Deadline. “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.”
mxdwn reported that two major villains are reuniting in season two despite losing Black. Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno) and her character’s master, Jedi Baylan Skoll (Rory McCann), hinted at extended screen time for this upcoming season.