Jordan Stephens has revealed that he turned down an offer to appear in the Star Wars series Andor as bosses wanted him to shave off the locs he was sporting at the time.
The Rizzle Kicks star and actor previously appeared in the Star Wars spin-off Rogue One as Corporal Tonc, a member of the Rebel Alliance, and was invited to reprise the role in a Disney+ series set in the same sci-fi universe.
However, he told Zeteo UK that he wound up saying no to the opportunity due to what was being asked of him, claiming that execs wanted him to “cut my locs off” for “a day” of filming, branding the situation “so ridiculous”.
“In Rogue One – which many people say is the best Star Wars spin-off, but anyway… – in that film, I’m wearing a helmet the whole time,” he pointed out.
“So I was like, ‘yeah, I’ve got locs, who cares, just put me in a helmet’.”
“I was really excited about potentially doing it by the way. I found this out only a week before, they started asking me these questions,” he continued.
And while he chose not to name the person in question, he then recalled a member of the creative team telling him: “Well we’re going to shoot scenes of the army training […] so we’re going to need you in, like, traditional army attire, including your hair – and if you have locs, I don’t think it would be realistic’.”
Jordan said: “And I was like, ‘you’re talking about an intergalactic space war with giant slugs and swords made out of light… and you’re worried about a soldier having dreadlocks?’.
“The cognitive dissonance is too much for me to handle. I can’t. The idea that someone would watch the film and go, ‘oh, he’s got dreadlocks, so it’s obviously not real’. What is going on? It’s absolutely insane.”
HuffPost UK has contacted Disney for comment.
IGN has noted that Jordan’s character wouldn’t even have been the first in the Star Wars universe to sport dreadlocks, as the animated Jedi Quinlan Vos had them in the Clone Wars series.
Andor ran for two seasons between 2022 and 2025, boasting an enviable Rotten Tomatoes score in the high-90s.
