Director J.J. Abrams has added a pair of newcomers to the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII in UK-based American actress Crystal Clarke and British actor and parkour practitioner Pip Andersen (see his Spider-Man ad here), both from an open casting call in which over 37,000 showed up in 11 cities across the US and UK.
There is wo word on what parts Clarke or Anderson will play in the film, as production takes a two week hiatus, allowing time for Harrison Ford to recover from a broken leg for which he had surgery back in mid-June.
However, what you should note from today’s announcement, the studio again confirms production is on track for the planned December 18, 2015 release, despite the silly rumors speculating otherwise.
That being said, just because filming isn’t taking place now, it has been going on for some time now and Kevin Smith, whose become more of a roaming reporter as of late and DC Comics aficionado, visited the set (the photo in this post comes from his Instagram) and during a Q&A at the Neuchatel International Film Festival in Switzerland, Smith gave a “Master Class” and discussed his time on set.
Here’s a sample of what he had to say
He turns the lights on and there is the Millennium Falcon from my childhood. Now the ship outside looks like a movie set, but the inside, fully replicated, fully built. The guy told me, they took two blueprints: Star Wars and Empire, because the cockpit in Empire was bigger than the cockpit in Star Wars. So they went somewhere between the two. So he takes me over and I’m just looking at it. You look at it from the outside — you can still see inside — and I don’t presume we’re going aboard or anything, and then Morgan [J.J. Abrams’ assistant] says, “You ready to go up?” I said, “We can go on it?!” and she said, “Yeah,” and I said, “Right on!”
[…]
As I walked up that ramp I realized something missing from [the prequels] and it’s now in these movies, and it’s not the obvious like Hey the Millennium Falcon or Hey the characters that we know are returning, it’s something else entirely. [Abrams’] is building a tactile world, a world you can touch. And he’s replicating with all the love of somebody that has the world’s greatest collection of Star Wars figures. And when you walk on that set man, I don’t know how else to describe it except thusly — to you use another pop culture reference to describe this pop culture phenomenon — it is like Field of Dreams, the Kevin Costner movie, and if J.J. builds it, we’re all going to come, hard. Because its amazing, it looks fantastic.
You can watch the whole thing in the video below with the Star Wars: Episode VII comments beginning at the 35:26 mark where he’s first asked about being on board the Millennium Falcon, but it doesn’t really begin until about 39:36.

