Since leaving the world of galactic warfare and space wizards behind, Daisy Ridley has built quite an impressive resume for herself. From portraying the lead role in Ophelia, a reimagination of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" to playing Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim across the English Channel, in her biopic Young Woman and the Sea, Ridley has hopped across genres.
Her next movie, Cleaner, is an action flick that is being compared with the Die Hard series. She is playing Joey, a window cleaner who is also an ex-soldier. The official synopsis revealed that the movie will be set in a London skyscraper that gets hijacked by a group of criminal activists trying to expose an energy company's corruption at their annual gala. One extremist crosses the line and tries to murder everyone in the building, and it falls to Ridley's character - who will be suspended 50 floors up, dangling on the outside of the building - to save everyone, including her younger brother.
In a recent interview with Inverse, Ridley quipped about the parallel with the Bruce Willis starrer series. "I called it Dry Shard because we were supposed to be on the Shard."
However, Ridley is not done with Star Wars and is excited to see how the script for her New Jedi Order movie, set to be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, turns out. She believes the franchise is certainly political - a fact that is lost on a certain section of the fanbase - but it also intertwines with a personal, more sentimental element.
"I feel like the Star Wars films are all political. I feel like it's the individual versus the big corporation or the big group, so I think they always have been," Ridley shared with Inverse. "And ultimately I think the films are emotional in that it's good and evil, which we all can relate to very specifically in our day-to-day lives. But yes, I do feel those conversations are woven within the story, and I'm very excited to see what George {Nolfi] does."
Ridley's comment mirrors that of George Nolfi of The Bourne Ultimatum fame and the latest writer to be associated with Obaid-Chinoy's movie. The film has faced some difficulty with retaining writers. Nolfi told Film Stories that he understands how George Lucas' universe is "very steeped in broad notions of politics."
"It’s not talking about today, per se, but there’s the Empire’s Nazism slash Roman Empire."
"She's really trying to do the right thing": Daisy Ridley on her Cleaner character
While Daisy Ridley's new movie is nothing like Star Wars, it still seems to have a similar underlying message. At its core, Cleaner is about a group of people with the right intention but wrong execution against an individual who is trying to make it right. But there's more to why she took the role.
In the film, Joey's brother Michael, played by Matthew Tuck, is neurodivergent. "I spoke to a few people close to me who have a similar sibling dynamic of neurotypical and neurodivergent and one slightly in more of a caregiving position, and honestly really wanted to honor that," Ridley said.
"I think the relationship me and Matt were able to create was so sibling and complicated and not always straightforward, but so much of Joey, she's really trying to do the right thing."