Via Ew.com:
A friend and I were arguing about a deeply urgent divisive issue: Whether Captain Phasma never removing her helmet in The Force Awakens was cool or not. “You don’t hire somebody as talented as Gwendoline Christie for a Star Wars movie and then never show her face, it wastes her performance!” my friend fumed. While I countered: “An actor’s movements and voice are every bit as important as their face, and there’s something intriguing about not fully revealing a character, just like Darth Vader and Boba Fett, especially since Kylo Ren was whipping off his helmet left and right!”

So I asked somebody else to settle this: Gwendoline Christie. This is a bit like a real-life version of the famous scene in Annie Hall when Woody Allen fantasized about pulling out philosopher Marshall McLuhan to back him up in an argument.

“I thought it was a really interesting opportunity because as an actor I’m interested in transformation and different kinds of roles,” Christie told EW. “What’s the role about? Who is the character? What does the character mean in the function of a project or story? I thought it was a really interesting opportunity to play a female character where we formed an opinion of her based on her actions rather than the way she has been made flesh. And that concept within a Star Wars movie, a mainstream phenomenon, was very modern and interesting and exciting. I made no secret of the fact I wanted to be in the film, I campaigned hard to be in the film, but to be in it as that kind of character – she’s a woman, she’s in armor, the armor isn’t sexualized, and in the film we don’t see the actor’s face – I thought that was an exciting, modern concept. And obviously, I’m delighted to be in another film [Episode VIII].”

Click below to read the full article.