Manny Jacinto Turns to the Dark Side in ‘The Acolyte’

This interview includes spoilers for the first season of “The Acolyte.”

As it turns out, Manny Jacinto brought some relevant experience to “The Acolyte”: He understands how to change characters.

Jacinto is best known for “The Good Place,” the hit NBC sitcom on which he played an unspeaking Buddhist monk before being unmasked as Jason Mendoza, a lovable, Jacksonville Jaguars-obsessed dummy who is anything but mute. “I had no idea what I was stepping into,” Jacinto said in an interview. “It was my first job in the States. I didn’t even have a green card yet.”

He has since worked alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Nicole Kidman, in the television series “Nine Perfect Strangers” — a series in which he showed a more stoic side, playing a character who essentially served as Kidman’s acolyte.

He then appeared with Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick.” And this summer he added arguably the biggest franchise of all to his résumé, taking a role in the latest big-budget “Star Wars” series on Disney+. Created by Leslye Headland, “The Acolyte” wrapped up its first season on Tuesday.

As was the case in “The Good Place,” Jacinto’s character was not who he seemed.

Jacinto, who is Filipino and Canadian, starred as Qimir, a pharmacist who began the show as a kind of accomplice to a young woman named Mae (Amandla Stenberg), who is on her mission to hunt and kill Jedi. In the fifth episode of the season, he was revealed to actually be a Sith Lord known as “the Stranger,” elevating Jacinto from an afterthought apothecary to a top-line “Star Wars” villain. In Tuesday’s season finale, he fought another lightsaber battle and got the acolyte his character always wanted.

In two different interviews — one early in the season and another after the finale premiered on Tuesday — Jacinto discussed how he entered the “Star Wars” universe, his shift to the dark side and the possibility of more seasons of “The Acolyte.” Here are excerpts from the conversations.