Lucas tapped his fingers rhythmically against the tabletop—a habit he only displayed when deep in thought.
"A very interesting interpretation. Go on."
"So, Anakin's struggle is fundamentally a story about choice," Raphael continued. "Choosing between following the rules and following his heart. Choosing between duty and love. Choosing between the light and... the seductive pull of the dark. His ultimate tragedy—his fall to the Dark Side—isn't because he's inherently evil. It's because, at every critical juncture, he makes the most 'human' choice possible: the desperate need to protect the people he loves, the paralyzing terror of loss, and the obsessive desire to control his own destiny."
The room was dead silent. The other panelists exchanged significant glances, while Lucas seemed lost in thought.
"You've dug much deeper into this than I expected," Lucas finally said after a long pause. "Most actors who walk in here just tell me, 'He's a fallen hero tempted by the dark,' or 'He's a kid driven crazy by love.' You're seeing the underlying machinery."
Raphael offered a slight bow. "Thank you. I believe the reason Anakin is the anchor of the Star Wars saga is exactly because he's so impossibly complicated. He's the savior, but he's also the destroyer. He's a Jedi Knight, but he's also a Sith apprentice. He's a selfish hero and a selfless lover. That mass of contradictions is what makes him real."
Lucas nodded slowly. "Alright then. Let's see if your performance can back up that level of understanding. Rick?"
Producer Rick McCallum pulled two pages from a stack. "We've got two scenes for you. The first is a dialogue sequence between Anakin and Padmé by the lake on Naboo. The second is Anakin's monologue after waking up from a nightmare about his mother. You'll be acting alone; we have a reader to feed you the lines for the first scene."
"Can I start with the second scene?" Raphael asked suddenly.
Lucas raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Because that monologue is the fulcrum of his entire emotional arc," Raphael explained. "In that single moment, his hunger for power, his paralyzing fear of loss, and his growing resentment toward the Jedi dogma all collide. If I can nail the emotional truth of that scene, sliding into the first scene will be effortless."
It was a bold request. Actors at this level didn't usually dictate the terms of their audition to the director. But Lucas looked intrigued.
"Interesting," Lucas murmured. "Alright. Let's do it your way."
A PA dragged a single chair into the center of the performance space.
Raphael walked over but didn't sit down immediately. He closed his eyes and regulated his breathing.
The memories of the dream world washed over him—not the older Anakin he had seen briefly in the Jedi Temple, but the raw, unpolished version. The young man jolting awake in the dead of night, drenched in cold sweat, his eyes wide with absolute, suffocating terror.
When Raphael opened his eyes again, his entire posture had shifted. His shoulders were slightly hunched, his fingers coiled in an unconscious, tight grip, and his gaze was erratic and manic. He perfectly embodied someone pushed to the edge by chronic sleep deprivation and agonizing nightmares.
He sank into the chair, staring blankly at his hands. The camera operator pushed in, capturing the microscopic shifts in his expression.
"It was the dream again..." Raphael began, his voice gravelly, laced with the disorientation of someone just waking up. "My mother... she was screaming. Begging for help. But I couldn't reach her. I was trapped..."
His fingers started to tremble. It wasn't a broad, theatrical shake; it was a minute, involuntary tremor at the very tips of his fingers. The panelists unconsciously held their breath. That level of micro-physical control was almost unheard of in actors his age.
"Obi-Wan says dreams pass in time."
Raphael continued, the tempo of his delivery picking up. "That a Jedi must not be ruled by fear... But what if it's real? What if she's out there, suffering, right now... and I'm just sitting here, reciting Jedi scripture—"
His head snapped up, his eyes practically radiating a toxic cocktail of fury and total helplessness. The intensity of the glare was so palpable that even the veteran Lucas unconsciously leaned back in his chair.
"Power!"
Raphael's voice spiked, but he didn't shout. It was a pressurized, guttural explosion of sound. "They keep telling me I have power! The Chosen One! The Force is with me! But if I can't even save my own mother... what good is any of it?"
He vaulted out of the chair and began pacing the small space like a caged animal. His steps were heavy, erratic, and coiled with a kinetic energy that had nowhere to go.
"I can feel her pain... it's like a knife twisting in my chest." He pressed a hand hard against his sternum, his fingers digging into his shirt. "Every night, it gets sharper. What are they hiding from me? Or... do they just not care?"
He stopped dead in his tracks. He turned his back to the table, his shoulders heaving as if he were physically wrestling his emotions into submission. A few seconds later, he slowly turned back around. His expression had completely flatlined. The explosive rage had calcified into a terrifying, icy resolve.
"If the Jedi Code can't give me the answers," he whispered, his voice so soft it barely carried, yet somehow hitting harder than the shouting, "then I'll find them myself."
With that final word, the performance ended.
Raphael stood perfectly still, taking a few deep breaths, systematically pulling himself out of the character's headspace.
When he finally looked up, he was just a calm, composed 19-year-old kid again.
The soundstage was dead silent. Even the reader had forgotten to breathe.
"Jesus Christ..." casting director Robin Gurland whispered.
Lucas slowly took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and put them back on. He stared at Raphael in silence for a full ten seconds.
"Have you trained in the Method?" Lucas finally asked.
"Not formally," Raphael answered honestly. "But I've heavily studied Brando and De Niro's approach to the craft."
"I can tell," Lucas nodded. "That internal emotional architecture you just built... and the granular control of your body language. That didn't look like technique. It looked like you were genuinely reliving the trauma."
Raphael felt a momentary spike of adrenaline.
Lucas's instincts were terrifyingly sharp. Raphael had experienced it—not firsthand, but he had stood in the dream world and watched the real Anakin Skywalker tear himself apart.
"Do you need to see the second scene?" producer McCallum asked quietly.
Lucas waved a hand dismissively. "No. That's enough. Raphael, talk to me about Anakin and Padmé. How do you view their dynamic?"
It was another trap.
The success or failure of the prequel trilogy hinged entirely on whether the audience bought into their romance. If the love story didn't work, Anakin's fall to the Dark Side would feel cheap and unearned.
Raphael thought for a second, then pivoted to a completely unorthodox angle. "The danger of their relationship isn't that it's forbidden. The danger is that it's fundamentally asymmetrical. Anakin loves her too fiercely. It's a desperate, consuming kind of love. Padmé was the only sliver of light in his nightmare childhood. She's his only emotional tether to a life outside of slavery on Tatooine. So he clings to her the way a drowning man clings to a raft. He will do literally anything to ensure he never loses her."
He paused, letting the analysis set in.
"As for Padmé... she absolutely loves Anakin. But she also loves the Republic. She loves her ideals, and she's bound by her sense of duty. Her love is mature and grounded. But because of that maturity, she is fundamentally incapable of understanding the suffocating, paranoid, possessive nature of Anakin's love. That inherent disconnect in how they view love is what makes the tragedy inevitable."
Lucas's fingers started drumming against the table again, the rhythm much faster this time. He was hooked.
"One last question." Lucas leaned forward, his eyes locked onto Raphael like a laser. "If you book this part, what is your prep process?"
Raphael knew this was the kill shot.
"Three things," he said without hesitation. "First, I undergo intense, systematic swordplay training. Not stage combat—actual, practical martial arts sword fighting. Anakin is a warrior-monk. Every single time he moves, it needs to carry the lethal precision of a soldier."
"Second, I research the psychological devastation of 'prophecy' and 'destiny.' I'd dive into behavioral psychology texts, maybe even study real-world religious figures who were proclaimed to be messiahs. I need to understand the crushing, suffocating pressure of having an entire galaxy expect you to be their living symbol."
"And third..." He paused. "I need to deconstruct the 'pull of the Dark Side.' I'm not going to play him as a guy who just 'turns evil.' I need to internalize the specific progression of his fall: the sensation of realizing you have God-like power, the absolute certainty that you are the only one capable of saving the people you love, and the creeping isolation of having everyone tell you you're wrong when every instinct in your body tells you you're right. That's the slope he slips down."
Lucas leaned back in his chair, his expression totally unreadable.
He turned to his casting director. "Robin? Thoughts?"
Gurland cleared her throat. "Best read we've had. Period. His grasp of the psychology, his technical execution, his look... it's all exactly what we need. However, we have to talk about the business side. Raphael only has one major credit. Yes, Fast and Furious opened huge, but he's still largely unproven."
"Unproven isn't a dealbreaker," Lucas countered smoothly. "Ewan McGregor wasn't exactly a global superstar when we cast him as Obi-Wan. Besides..."
Lucas turned his gaze back to Raphael. "There's something else about you. It's not just raw talent—Hollywood is crawling with talented kids. It's a sense of... gravity. You carry yourself like a man who's lived a lot of life. You don't feel nineteen."
Raphael kept his face neutral, but inside, he was impressed. Lucas didn't miss a trick.
"You can go," Lucas said, a tone of finality in his voice. "We'll be in touch within three days. Regardless of how this shakes out, you delivered a hell of an audition today."
"The honor was mine, Mr. Lucas." Raphael offered a polite nod, turned on his heel, and walked out.
As he exited the soundstage, he could practically feel the eyes boring into his back—the other hopefuls waiting in the hall, the crew members, and likely the panel watching him through the glass.
Out in the parking lot, Raphael didn't get in his car right away. He leaned against the door, staring off into the distance, mentally dissecting every beat of his performance. It was a habit of his—a rigorous, post-action review.
He had dumped every ounce of his experience from the dream world into that room. That terrifying empathy for Anakin wasn't acting; it was emotional bleed-over from the memories he had lived.
"The Chosen One..." Raphael muttered, thinking back to the blonde kid he had passed in the halls of the Jedi Temple.
If the real Anakin knew his life was being turned into a blockbuster movie, destined to be watched, dissected, and judged by billions of people across the globe... what would he think?
His phone buzzed, snapping him out of his reverie. It was Ari.
"Well? Talk to me," his agent demanded, breathless.
"It's done. Lucas said we'll hear back in three days."
"How did it feel?"
Raphael took a slow breath. "I left it all on the floor, Ari. The rest is up to the universe."
"Jesus Christ, since when do you talk about 'the universe'? That's not like you at all. You're usually the most arrogant prick I know."
"This isn't about arrogance," Raphael said softly, his eyes locked on the Hollywood sign in the hills. "Some roles... you just know that if you let them slip through your fingers, you'll be kicking yourself for the rest of your life."