Star Wars fans may best recognise Supa-Star Diana Lee Inosanto as Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth, the formidable Nightsister responsible for bringing Grand Admiral Thrawn back from his period of intergalactic exile. Yet while Inosanto proudly celebrates Morgan as one of her favourite roles to-date, her decades long career as a stunt performer, coordinator, actor, director and voice-over artist has seen her work on everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Star Trek: Enterprise.

Ahead of Inosanto’s forthcoming appearance at Supanova in Adelaide (31 October – 2 November), we had the chance to ask the vaunted Imperial loyalist a few burning questions about her incredible career both in front of, and behind the cameras.

“I think the most exciting project I worked on as a stunt woman now, in my stunt woman days, was Face/Off, with director John Woo, who I absolutely adore,” Inosanto recalls, when asked of her most memorable stunt work.

“What I loved so much about that movie was how John Woo as a director really was tuned into his cast and crew, and he really, really, really cared about everybody, including the stunt people. And that, I find is very important.”

Yet as much as she looks back fondly on Woo’s 1997 face swapping classic, it was Inosanto’s introduction as Morgan Elsbeth in The Mandalorian season 2 that stands as one of the proudest moments of her career, especially when George Lucas himself elected to drop by the set.

“Overall, of course, it’s gonna be Star Wars,” she laughs. “I love Ahsoka, but The Mandalorian is what really kicked it off for me. Particularly The Jedi episode because that was Dave Filoni directing and Jon Favreau producing. And George Lucas came by the set to see Rosario [Dawson] and I do our fight scene.”

And it was a fight sequence that Inosanto was able to inject some of her own martial arts prowess into. While she proudly credits Ahsoka stunt coordinator and Wushu master Ming Qiu, Lucasfilm’s first ever female fight choreographer, with the later fight sequences audiences glimpsed in Ahsoka season 1, Inosanto did manage to put her own spin on her first showdown with Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice.

“The Mandalorian was more my flavour,” she explains. “And a lot of the people that helped put that choreography together ironically studied under my father, Dan Inosanto. But I did improvise in the fight scene in The Mandalorian, The Jedi episode with Rosario.

“So anywhere where I wasn’t making contact to her, I would flurry my beskar spear. And apparently, they liked what they saw, and they put it in.”

While the events of Ahsoka season 1 may have seen Inosanto’s Nightsister struck down, Star Wars fans are all too accustomed to seeing the most unlikely of characters return from the clutches death. Yet, when asked whether viewers can expect more of Morgan Elsbeth, Inosanto coyly replies, “The mouse has ears. I can’t say anything, plus, they don’t tell us anything.”

She does, however, praise the decision to bring her character back for the animated prequel series Tales of the Empire.

“I loved working with Dave Filoni,” she says of seeing him in his original element as a director of animation. “It was magic working with him and his team. I really got to dig my, you know, my teeth into this meat of a role and I loved it. And I loved how it came out.”

The veteran martial artist was also impressed with the level of detail applied to the animated fight sequences within the show, including a special nod directed toward her godfather, Bruce Lee.

“I loved how the Lucasfilm animation team spent a lot of time studying my fights on the internet,” she explains.  “Anything that was out there of me doing martial arts over the course of many years, they studied my fights, they looked at my material from The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, and they are so good.

“I didn’t even have to do mo-cap because a lot of the Lucasfilm animation team, some of them were martial artists, including Steward Lee, who was the director of, I believe, the second episode, Tales of the Empire, and they had my fights down.

“They had the styles and the systems that I practice. And then they did a homage to Uncle Bruce. I don’t know if you noticed that. Particularly, in that fight scene on the bridge.”

As for her future beyond the world of Star Wars, Inosanto reveals that she hopes to return to directing following her 2008 independent film The Sensei. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been behind the camera as a director,” she reveals. “And I’m trying to get that up and going.”

As for what her dream project will be, Inosanto explains that in addition to her love for action and sci-fi, she has a particular fondness for musicals, something she regularly grew up watching with her parents.

“I love, love musicals,” she explains. “Maybe it’s because my mom was a dancer and I grew up watching all kinds of musicals with my mom, and my dad actually too. In fact, it’s my dream to direct a musical one day.”

Supa-Fans will have their chance to pick Diana Lee Inosanto’s brain about her favourite musicals and all things Star Wars when she arrives at Supanova in Adelaide (31 October – 2 November 2025).