Andor's Adria Arjona Almost Played Qi'ra in Solo — and She's Thrilled She Didn't
Adria Arjona just revealed how close she came to playing Qi'ra in Solo: A Star Wars Story — she screen-tested opposite Alden Ehrenreich for the film's original directors before the role went to Emilia Clarke. Her verdict, eight years and one Andor performance later: "I'm so thankful I didn't get it."
There's a version of this decade where Adria Arjona's entire Star Wars story starts and ends with Solo: A Star Wars Story. She got far enough in that casting process to screen-test with Alden Ehrenreich in front of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — the film's original directors, before Lucasfilm famously pulled them off the project mid-shoot and brought in Ron Howard to reshoot the bulk of the movie. She described the audition itself in almost reverent terms: "I don't think I've ever been more nervous in my life. They put you in a suit, and my biggest dream ever was to be in a Star Wars movie." The role of Qi'ra ultimately went to Emilia Clarke. Arjona's response, looking back now: "I'm so thankful I didn't get it."
Why That's Not False Modesty
It would be easy to read that as a celebrity being diplomatic about a rejection, but the timeline makes it a genuinely honest statement instead. Solo underperformed badly at the box office when it released in 2018 — it's still the film most often cited as the moment Lucasfilm pumped the brakes on its post-Disney release cadence, going from a movie a year to a multi-year gap before The Rise of Skywalker. Qi'ra herself became one of the more debated characters of the era: compelling in theory, underserved by a script that had been torn apart and reassembled mid-production by two different directing teams. Landing that role in 2018 would have meant Arjona's first and possibly only Star Wars credit was attached to the franchise's most visible theatrical stumble of the post-acquisition years.
Instead, four years later, she got cast as Bix Caleen in Andor — a show that's become the closest thing this franchise has to unanimous critical consensus. Bix isn't a supporting character in the background of someone else's story; she's one of the emotional cores of both seasons, carrying some of the show's heaviest material, including a storyline about trauma and captivity that Tony Gilroy's writers room handled with a seriousness rarely afforded to genre television. Swap those two roles and you get the opposite career trajectory entirely: a flashy but contested blockbuster role instead of a defining performance in what a lot of critics, myself included, would call the best long-form Star Wars storytelling the franchise has ever produced.
The Sliding-Doors Version of Star Wars Casting
This is the part of franchise filmmaking that rarely gets talked about honestly: casting is closer to a lottery with acting talent as the ticket than a meritocratic pipeline where the "right" actor always ends up in the "right" role. Emilia Clarke wasn't a bad Qi'ra — she did solid work with underwritten material. But Arjona missing out on Solo wasn't a loss so much as a redirect, and it's rare for an actor to be this candid about being glad a specific door closed. Most performers, understandably, stick to diplomatic "everything happens for a reason" platitudes about auditions that didn't pan out. Arjona naming the alternate timeline explicitly — this role instead of that one — and picking the one she actually got is a level of honesty about how random this business is that's worth appreciating on its own.
What This Says About Solo's Legacy, Too
There's also a quieter point buried in here about how Solo is remembered inside the industry versus how fans have slowly come around on parts of it. The film has picked up a mild reappraisal in recent years — Donald Glover's Lando performance in particular gets consistently praised, and elements of the film's heist-movie structure have aged better than its initial box office reception suggested. But an actor who nearly starred in it describing her own near-miss as something to be thankful for is a pretty clear signal of how the production is remembered by the people who lived through its chaotic behind-the-scenes reshuffling, directors and all.
The Takeaway
Sometimes the best thing that happens to an actor's Star Wars career is the role they don't get. Arjona traded a shot at leading a contested blockbuster for a defining part in what's widely considered this franchise's creative high point, and she knows it. That's not a bad way for a "what could have been" story to end — for her, or for the fans who got Bix Caleen instead of a different Qi'ra. May the Force be with whoever ends up cast in whatever role Arjona turns down next.
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