Kathleen Kennedy Says Casting Han Solo Was “An Impossible Situation” for Alden Ehrenreich

Kathleen Kennedy has spent years defending Lucasfilm’s big swings — and to be fair, Star Wars requires big swings.

But in her latest Deadline exit interview, the outgoing Lucasfilm president offered a rare moment of direct, personal reflection on one of the most debated choices of the Disney era: asking Alden Ehrenreich to replace Harrison Ford as Han Solo.

And Kennedy doesn’t sugarcoat it.

Why this matters now

With Kennedy stepping away from Lucasfilm leadership, these interviews aren’t just PR. They’re the closest thing we’ll get to an official post-mortem on modern Star Wars decision-making.

And Solo: A Star Wars Story has always been one of the most interesting case studies:

• a beloved character
• a new actor in an iconic role
• a behind-the-scenes production shakeup
• and a movie that became known as “the one that underperformed” — even if a lot of fans think it didn’t deserve that label

So Kennedy acknowledging regret here isn’t small. It’s a signal that Lucasfilm knows exactly what went wrong conceptually, even if the movie itself has aged better for many viewers.

What Kathleen Kennedy said

Kennedy praised Ehrenreich directly, but admitted the role itself was almost unfair:

“As wonderful as Alden Ehrenreich was, and he really was good, and is a wonderful actor, we put him in an impossible situation.”

She then explains the reality of being committed to the casting:

“And once you’re in it and once you’re committed, you’ve got to carry on.”

And here’s the key part — her regret isn’t about the filmmaking or the finished product.

It’s about the timing and concept:

“I think I have a bit of regret about that, but not about the moviemaking and filmmaking. I don’t have regrets about that. I just think that conceptually, we did it too soon.”

That’s an unusually clear admission, especially for a franchise that rarely admits anything publicly.

The underlying truth: you can’t “replace” Harrison Ford

You can cast a new Han Solo.

You can write a young Han story.

You can even make a solid movie (which Solo arguably is).

But you cannot avoid the cultural fact that Harrison Ford’s Han Solo is one of the most iconic performances in blockbuster history.

So no matter how good Ehrenreich was (and he genuinely had moments where he worked), the comparison was always going to be brutal.

Kennedy calling it “impossible” is basically Lucasfilm admitting what a lot of people felt in 2018:

Even a perfect performance would’ve been judged through the “but it’s not Harrison” lens.

Why this matters to Star Wars fans

This quote doesn’t just re-litigate Solo.

It adds context to why Lucasfilm has been careful since then with legacy recasts.

You can feel the impact of this decision in how the franchise moved afterward:

• leaning into Disney+ instead of risky theatrical experiments
• using deepfake/voice tech (Luke, Leia) rather than recasting in live-action
• building new heroes instead of repeating old ones

Kennedy’s regret basically explains the strategy shift — without saying the words.

The Takeaway: Solo didn’t fail because of Alden — it failed because it was too soon

Kennedy’s quote draws a clean line between two things:

• the film itself (which she says she doesn’t regret making)
• the concept of doing a young Han so quickly after the original era

And that hits hard, because it reframes Solo in the fairest way possible:

Alden Ehrenreich didn’t “lose” against Harrison Ford.

He was asked to win a game that had no winning version.

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