Warning: Spoilers for The Acolyte beyond this point.
I’ve got a bone to pick with Manny Jacinto. It’s early last Monday afternoon—a day before the seventh and penultimate episode of his hit Star Wars series The Acolyte’s first season debuts on Disney+—and we’ve both logged on to Zoom for our third interview in three months. We had built up something of a rapport, I’d thought, over the course of those first two conversations. But since the last time we talked, I’ve come to realize he’d spent sizable swaths of our previous chats lying straight to my face.
“I feel so bad,” Jacinto tells me now, though his rascally grin says otherwise. “I need to put out a press release where I formally apologize to all the journalists I lied to on this entire junket.”
The big, juicy fib in question? That Qimir, Jacinto’s Acolyte character, was nothing but a goofy, innocuous, comic-relief smuggler. “Han Solo without the rizz,” as he put it to me during our first meeting in May, a few weeks prior to the show’s premiere. As it turns out, Qimir was little more than a flimsy guise for the Stranger—the unnervingly vicious Sith Lord whose true identity was revealed in the show’s propulsive fifth episode.
What’s most striking about the Stranger is how undeniably, irrepressibly sexy he is. For the better part of five decades, Star Wars has been a franchise largely starved for sensuality. Han Solo, as Jacinto correctly alluded to, had plenty of rizz—but he hardly ever got to deploy it beyond the occasional chaste kiss and cheeky one-liner. The less that’s said about the anti-chemistry between Anakin and Padme in the prequels the better. And while Rey and Kylo Ren built up some genuine tension via Rian Johnson’s Bergman-and-Bogie-esque patter in The Last Jedi, it all fizzled out into nothing in that trilogy’s dud of a denouement The Rise of Skywalker.
By contrast, when the Stranger is first unmasked, in the midst of a brutal Jedi killing spree in episode five, the camera movements and moody lighting appear engineered to maximize Jacinto’s heartthrobbiness: His exposed arms are as taut and defined as the chassis of a Ferrari; his glistening cheekbones, bisected by a pair of meticulously swooping bangs, appear even sharper and more menacing than the lightsabers he’s gripping. An episode later, the show doubled down, having the Stranger and his abs bathe buck naked in a hot spring while flirting brazenly with Osha, one of the twin protagonists played by Amandla Stenberg. (Sample dialogue, after Osha picks up the Stranger’s lightsaber: “Feels good, doesn’t it? To hold one in your hand again?”)
The internet, as you might expect, has suffered a complete and utter knee-quivering meltdown in the Stranger’s wake. “I just started chewing on cement,” reads one tweet, posted alongside a horny fan edit of Stranger clips set to “Freak” by Doja Cat. “Manny Jacinto is about to lead me places I wouldn’t even go with a gun (back to Star Wars),” says another. Time went as far as to use Jacinto and The Acolyte as the impetus for a trend story: “The Rise of the Thirst Trap Villain.” Not even Disney+’s audio description is immune to Jacinto’s physical gifts.
“I mean, I think baby oil goes a long way,” Jacinto humbly deflects when I mention the widespread libidinousness he’s caused. “Baby oil and wet hair.”
That explanation vastly underplays the intangible stew of serious chops, quiet ambition, and, yes, swoon-worthy good looks that has vaulted the 36-year-old from a breakout role on the cherished Mike Schur sitcom The Good Place to holding his own opposite Nicole Kidman on Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers to this legitimate star-making turn in The Acolyte.
“The Stranger flips classic gender tropes of hypersexualization,” Leslye Headland, The Acolyte’s creator and showrunner, tells me over email. “But a true sex symbol is someone who resonates emotionally with fans. Manny’s magnetism is rooted in his acting, not just his physique. His ability to access vulnerability, empathy, and longing is very compelling.”
It’s rare to catch an actor on the precipice of reaching a whole new level of celebrity, and rarer still to watch them experience and process it in real time, as Jacinto did over the course of our three conversations. And with The Acolyte’s first season now in the books, its scene-stealing Sith Lord has plenty on his mind about how and why his character became so instantly adored and where his surging career might go from here.
The first time Jacinto and I connected it was early May, and The Acolyte’s global press tour was still revving into high gear ahead of the show’s June 4 premiere. He was at his home in Los Angeles, which he shares with his wife, the actress Dianne Doan, and their “little hippo” of a dog Henrietta. Jacinto is Filipino-Canadian—he was born in Manila before emigrating to Vancouver with his family as a toddler—and in conversation, the politeness and grace inherent to both sides of his background shines through. He responds to questions thoughtfully and genuinely (if a little extra mindfully of the Disney NDAs he’s signed), in a manner that proves he was truly acting his pants off as The Good Place’s adorably dimwitted Jason Mendoza.
We spoke the night before the Gold Gala, an annual celebration of AAPI culture that we’d both be attending in LA, where Jacinto appeared on stage to introduce an exclusive Acolyte trailer to the VIP-heavy crowd. (At the event, I noticed that a woman sitting near me only pulled her phone out twice to snap photos: once for Lucy Liu, who was honored with a lifetime achievement award, and once for Jacinto. “I love him,” she told me. “I mean, have you seen that bone structure?”) Naturally, the confluence of the Gala and the impending premiere of the new show had Jacinto reflecting on what it means for a person who looks like him to star in a Star Wars project.
“I remember watching all of the movies with my parents growing up,” he said. “If I’m completely transparent with you, [Star Wars] was cool, it was something I admired, but almost from afar. Maybe because I didn’t see anybody like me in Star Wars, it was never something I aspired to be in, the way I’d watch a Jackie Chan film or something and go, ‘Oh, I want to do that.’ ”
Getting to be a part of The Acolyte’s notably diverse cast, then, means the world to Jacinto. “I know there are plenty of Star Wars fans that look like you and me already, but it’s exciting that in this new iteration we have Lee Jung-Jae, myself, Amandla, Jodie Turner-Smith,” he said. “Even more people of color will be able to relate to and celebrate and see themselves in this entity that is Star Wars.”
At this stage, Jacinto had already seen a rough cut of the entire show, and while he couldn't tell me anything about it yet—he joked about “sitting back and eating pizza” while the rest of the cast performed their stunts—he was beyond thrilled with the results. “This is so model minority of me, but it just feels like studying for an exam and actually doing well,” he said, with a laugh, of watching The Acolyte. “It feels like acing AP Calculus.” And then he caught himself, retreated a little, almost in an attempt not to jinx it. “I mean, at this point, who knows? Maybe they cut me out of the whole series. You just never know.”
Jacinto, unfortunately, was speaking from first-hand experience. In 2018, he was cast in Top Gun: Maverick, a role for which he endured months of punishing flight training in actual fighter jets and two-a-day gym sessions to attain a dogfight-football-ready physique. “You kind of feel like a superhero a little bit,” Jacinto told a news outlet in the Philippines back in 2022, just prior to the film’s release, about putting on the flight suit for the first time. “And it's an incredible feeling because even throughout shooting, we were able to meet a good amount of people in the Navy, people in the Air Force, and a good amount of them are Filipino. And to be able to represent that for them and have their face kind of represented, meant a lot.”
And then the movie came out, and Jacinto discovered his part had been reduced to mere seconds of screen time, with all of his dialogue left on the cutting room floor. Maverick went on to gross nearly $1.5 billion worldwide, skyrocketing the careers of Glen Powell and Miles Teller, but Jacinto wasn’t able to coast off that jet stream. His fans online were baffled and upset.
“It’s flattering that there was a little bit of an outcry, but it wasn’t shocking to me,” Jacinto told me regarding his diminished role. “There was this sense of where the film was going [on set], like I can see them focusing the camera more on these [other] guys and not taking so much time on our scenes. Fortunately, it still was a great experience—you get to see this huge machine at work, see how Tom Cruise works, and you get to be a small part of this huge franchise.”
Despite his typically cheery Canuck optimism, however, Jacinto admitted the disappointment lit a fire under him. “It kind of fuels you, because at the end of the day, Tom Cruise is writing stories for Tom Cruise,” he said. “It’s up to us—Asian Americans, people of color—to be that [for ourselves]. We can’t wait for somebody else to do it. If we want bigger stories out there, we have to make them for ourselves.”
When I reached Jacinto again on Zoom a few weeks later in June, he looked exhausted. It didn't help that he was sitting in the kind of windowless, taupe-walled, harshly-lit room that hostages are always held in on shows like 24. “I’m trapped inside one of the Lucasfilm holding rooms right now,” Jacinto explained. “Or… I wouldn't say trapped. I'm chilling out in one of the Lucasfilm holding rooms.”
By that point, the first couple of episodes of The Acolyte had dropped on Disney+, and Jacinto had spent the day doing hours of back-to-back interviews. “It can get a little tiring, but at the same time, man, Disney really believes in us,” he said. The weeks since we last spoke had “been a whirlwind,” with Jacinto ping-ponging from city to city, country to country, to get the word out. And while all that attention and press and travel can be overwhelming, it had its high points, too—like when his exceptionally proud parents walked the red carpet at the show’s Hollywood premiere and got interviewed by a Filipino TV station. “I can just quit now,” he said, beaming at the memory of that sweet moment with his folks. “I think now they’re going to start their acting careers and I’ll need to be their manager.”
But what should have been a purely triumphant moment for Jacinto felt a little more clouded than expected. “Mixed feelings all around,” he told me, when I asked what it’d been like to see a project he’d been working on for the better part of two years finally out in the world. “There’s a lot of love, which is great, but when somebody doesn’t like it, it’s that one comment that kind of just gets to you a little bit.”
The early reviews from critics were solid, praising in particular The Acolyte’s high-octane action sequences—which borrow heavily from the wuxia style of Hong Kong cinema—as well as Jacinto’s off-kilter jolt of a performance as Qimir. But the series has also been subject to review-bombing from a toxic subset of Star Wars fans, who've taken umbrage with showrunner Leslye Headland’s non-traditional approach to both casting and storytelling. Jacinto had been steeling himself for that type of reaction, especially after watching a certain chunk of the fandom outright reject Rian Johnson’s more daring choices in The Last Jedi, and was now trying his darnedest to take the long view.
“It’s a cycle,” Jacinto said. “With everything that’s come out since the original trilogy, there’s always a very passionate group that doesn’t like change, that wants that same feeling that they experienced when they were kids, only now they've grown up and their taste has matured and they're more critical about art or the world, and then they are just more precious about the things that they experienced when they were younger.”
He pointed out that the prequel trilogy, largely despised in its own time, is now beloved enough that when Hayden Christensen returned to the franchise two decades later, he got a rapturous hero’s welcome from fans. “Looking at it through that lens is really helpful. And it sucks that sometimes you have to wait 10, 20, 30 years to get your flowers. But the fact that a lot of people are enjoying it right now, I think that's all I can focus on right now. It might just take some time to get other people on board, but at the end of the day, I am so proud of what we made.”
By this point Qimir's big reveal was still three episodes away; Jacinto expressed frustration over how complicated it was to talk about his role in the show. “Ah, again, so much I can’t say," he kept having to say. When I asked if he felt a sense of relief now that The Acolyte has hit the airwaves, he sighed a little. “There is a little relief that people find Qimir fun,” he said. “It's very much just the beginning. We're just laying down the groundwork of the whole storyline. But I don't think the pressure or the anxiety of it all will... I don't know. I'm just an anxious person in general, so maybe it won't ever go away, but I hope that once all the episodes come out, I can just at least enjoy them with family and friends.”
The pressure and anxiety did go away, for the record. Enough so, at least, that during our third and final Zoom call a month later, Jacinto is relaxed, smiling wide, loose. He’s back at his house now, enjoying a day off from shooting Freaky Friday 2 (more on that later), and deservedly basking in the widespread adulation he’s received for his Acolyte performances in the aftermath of those pivotal episodes five and six. Being out from behind the Stranger's mask, he says, is "a huge weight off my shoulders. A huge relief to just not have to lie to people anymore.” And with the shackles finally off on our conversation, we dive right into all of it.
For starters: Playing the heavy had long been on Jacinto's bucket list. “I've been waiting a long time to play a villain like this, that's very understated, but also very powerful,” he says. “And then obviously a lot of people know me as Jason Mendoza from The Good Place, and I don't like being put into a box. At the end of the day, I just want to keep people guessing, exercise different muscles, and explore characters—whether they’re good guys or bad guys—with their own really strong belief systems. Now it's going to be an even greater task to have people not think of me as the Stranger, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.”
That last bit isn’t hyperbolic—after just a single eight-episode season, the Stranger already feels deserving of a place in the pantheon of great Star Wars antagonists. As one fan put it on X, “He’s the coolest Sith Lord in twenty years." Headland, the showrunner, said her main references in crafting the character were “antagonists in horror films and charismatic cult leaders”—which comes across in the Stranger’s disturbing yet disarming presentation—as well as Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, from whom she directly lifted a line of the Stranger’s dialogue: “When you lose everything, that’s when you’re finally free.”
The Acolyte is rightfully being hailed for its breathtaking action, and it’s the Stranger who deserves much of the onscreen credit for pushing those fight sequences to their logical extremes. Under the guidance of stunt director Christopher Cowan and his team, Jacinto developed a frenetic, neck-snapping combat style whose lethality comes as a genuine shock to most longtime Star Wars viewers. “When we were initially talking about how the character moved,” Jacinto says, “we noticed that in the prequels with Hayden and Ewan [McGregor], they were always very upright, like a fencer’s stance. But we wanted to just change levels and be incredibly dynamic. A big inspiration for us was the Rurouni Kenshin movies, these live-action Japanese movies with incredible swordplay. And I was and am really into Demon Slayer, which informed a lot as well.”
And if a Jedi or Sith is only as cool as their lightsaber, the Stranger’s pair of blades—one long, one short and dagger-like—also deserve mention. “I’m so proud of how those turned out, because it was very much a collaborative effort,” Jacinto says. “Leslye and I had the same idea of having a sneaky weapon to come out, because this guy plays dirty. And then it just so happens that having two blades is very much an ode to Filipino martial arts. It was a lot of work [to master], but I think it definitely paid off as a shout-out to my culture.”
Ultimately, of course, what truly renders the Stranger so instantly iconic is his carnality. (He puts the “seduced” in “seduced by the dark side of the force,” if you will.) It’s a difficult tightrope to walk—murdering Jedi at will and still coming off as sympathetic and likable—but Jacinto pulls it off with aplomb, gradually building a tantalizing bond with Osha through his subtle allure. “He’s like that high school bad boy,” Jacinto says. “He just minds his own business. He’s not pulling you, he’s not telling you to come and be with him. He’s just living his own life, and you wind up intrigued by what he’s doing.”
That raw magnetism might be the reason there's already more than enough Stranger fan art online for Jacinto to fill an Instagram carousel, but it’s not why the actor loves the character so deeply. “I think the best part about the Stranger is that he’s [this avatar for] not feeling accepted in a society that you're trying so hard to fit into,” he explains. “He just wants to exist. He wants to be able to express himself in this world, yet society is constantly telling him that he can’t.
“Leslye has expressed that she’s always felt that way as a female showrunner, as a lesbian in this industry, that sometimes people don’t take her seriously,” Jacinto continues. “She’s constantly had to prove herself in an industry that isn’t very open to people like her—or like myself. Having an Asian identity and fitting into American [society], fitting into Hollywood—I’ve had to fight so hard to fit in. And that’s a huge aspect of the Stranger.”
Jacinto has yet to fully process all the ways in which The Acolyte might just have changed his life. He’s been focusing on acting, keeping all social media apps off his phone—he periodically downloads Instagram to post work-related stuff before deleting it again—and spending as much downtime with his wife and pup as possible.
(It’s that devotion to his family, Headland says, that won her over initially. “Someone may be perfect for a role but you still need to meet them to see if they have a good vibe. Of course Manny was lovely and sweet. But at the hour mark of the meeting, he got a text from his wife (not urgent) and said ‘I have to go. It was very nice meeting you.’ It was endearing because I feel the same way about my wife. That cinched it for me. He walked out the door with the part.”)
For all the chatter about his charisma and physique on social media, Jacinto still has trouble buying into his own hype. “I think whether it be being Asian, or Filipino, or Canadian,” he says, “there's always going to be this sense of always being in disbelief that people actually find you attractive.”
And when I proffer that perhaps the buzz around this performance might now allow him the ability to pick and choose his roles going forward, he corrects me. “I mean, that’s the dream,” he says, “but I don’t know. Maybe it’s my lack of faith in this industry, but the people of color who find success, I feel like they still have to work at it and continue to fight for roles. The people I look up to—if you look at Steven Yeun, or Kumail Nanjiani, or even Donald Glover—they all had to, in some shape or form, create [projects for themselves] in order to continue to have a platform. Or even look at Dev Patel! He’s a huge star, but he had to make Monkey Man himself [to get an action role like that], and that was even shelved at one point. That's crazy to me. So that's why I have this caution towards whether or not the industry will move things forward for my career. If anything, it fuels me to try and create things on my own terms and hopefully lead projects that way.”
He’s laying the groundwork for that now, collaborating with a handful of Filipino writers and producers to develop new work. And despite checking the career milestone boxes of “Mike Schur sitcom regular” and “Star Wars villain,” there are a bunch more dream roles he’s still chasing. “I would love to do an incredible A24 or Neon indie. I’d love to be part of a new franchise, whether it’s a comic or a manga or an anime, like Naruto or One Punch Man. There’s still so much I need to do.”
Right now, his latest challenge is starring opposite Lindsay Lohan in Freaky Friday 2—a truly surreal experience for a child of the ’90s like Jacinto. “I never would've thought I'd be a part of the Lohanaissance,” he says. “She’s an icon. But I took this role because it’s definitely another big shift and something I’d never done before.”
There’s also the prospect of The Acolyte season two still on the horizon—the show has yet to be officially renewed, but Jacinto says there is plenty of story he and the rest of the cast and crew would love to dive in on. “In the fan art I've seen, there's a good amount that implies… something between Osha and the Stranger,” he says. “That's something that people, I think, have been yearning for in this genre, or at least in this IP, and I love that people are honing in on it and encouraging it. So I think people can look forward to more of that, possibly. If people want it, we can explore that in a subsequent season.”
The feeling Jacinto is chasing most in his work going forward, though, is something Headland allowed for him on the set of The Acolyte. “We were in Madeira doing episode six,” he recalls. “Leslye came into my tent and she was pacing. She was like, ‘Manny, I just want you.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And she said, ‘I just want you to be you. You don’t need to do the smirk, or the twitches, or any of the actorly stuff. I just want you to be you in this moment.’ ”
Jacinto was floored by the gesture. “It hit me pretty hard,” he says, “because I wasn't able to ever do that before. I was never given the permission to just be myself. And it was so freeing.”