VIDEO: Visit 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Set With New Featurette

With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker premiering at the end of this year, enthusiasm for the film is growing rapidly, and the film’s creators are now offering new glimpses at the inner workings of the installment. The newest look came this week in Vanity Fair, where viewers were able to see, among other things, a featurette exploring the set of the film on a day when legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz visited the set.

“To have Annie Leibovitz come and document the work that’s being done,” director J.J. Abrams says in the featurette, as highlighted by ComicBook.com. “It’s just, it’s a gift.” Kathleen Kennedy, the head of Lucasfilm, also noted in the video that, “Annie has been a part of this saga for almost 40 years. She’s sharing in the culmination of this with all of us.”

This marks Leibovitz’s fifth visit to a Star Wars film set over the course of her career. According to StarWars.com, Leibovitz began her relationship with the Star Wars franchise by photographing the cast of The Empire Strikes Back in the 1980s, and has visited the set of every Star Wars set since The Phantom Menace in 1999.

The featurette also features brief interviews with the leads of The Rise of Skywalker, John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac. All three stars shared that they felt a sense of nostalgia and wistfulness with the new trilogy coming to a conclusion. “I feel very nostalgic at many, many points that this is all, as everyone says, you don’t get experiences like this very often,” Ridley said. Isaac added, “I’m going to miss it so much,” and John Boyega remarked, “Me, Daisy, and Oscar; it’s like a moment in all of our lives, really."

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will play in theaters on Dec. 20, and we couldn’t be more excited to see it. We imagine we’ll get a little teary-eyed ourselves.