Daisy Ridley’s ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Audition Is Released

Daisy Ridley’s audition tape for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released by Disney in a new Behind-the-scenes video, on Friday.

Daisy Ridley’s ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Audition Tape Revealed

“What we were looking for was someone new,” J.J. Abrams said in the video, which is part of the home-video release of the Star Wars film.

“This character needed to be vulnerable and tough, sweet and terrified. And to find someone that no one knew who could do all these things took a lot of looking,” the director added.

In the video, Ridley can be seen crying in multiple takes of the torture scene, during her audition for the part of heroine Rey.

“When we brought her in, I asked her to do this one scene. It was this torture scene, very intense, and she just blew my mind,” Abrams said.

“She’s reaching this depth of struggle, and tears were streaming down her face, and I thought, ‘This is unbelievable,’” Abrams admitted. “I asked her to stop, gave her a couple of adjustments, do it again, and she did it again. I thought, ‘Oh, my God.’”

Abrams pointed out that though the team was “very lucky to find some great people” for the leading-lady role, Ridley was what they were looking for.

“It wasn’t until we found Daisy that we just felt like she was capable of doing all these things this character required,” he praised.