Author Amy Richau has been a contributing writer for StarWars.com and Star Wars Insider magazine for several years. She also contributed to the Star Wars docu-series Looking for Leia and has written for Nerdist and Screenrant as an entertainment journalist. Her first book for Lucasfilm Publishing and DK is entitled Star Wars: I Love You. I Know. – Lessons in Love and Friendship, which came out this month just in time for Valentine’s Day.
This week I had the opportunity to speak with Amy Richau over Zoom about Star Wars: I Love You. I Know., her lifelong love of the Star Wars franchise, and why Director Orson Krennic’s relationship with the Death Star is really a secret love story. Enjoy!
Mike Celestino, Laughing Place: Congratulations on the book! What was your relationship with Star Wars growing up?
Amy Richau: I am in my mid-forties, so I really did grow up with the original trilogy. It sounds like a joke, but it’s true that one of the first memories I can date is watching Alderaan get destroyed by the Death Star. I know that I was in the theater seeing A New Hope, but that’s literally the only thing I remember about it. But we were definitely a family that [had] Star Wars toys under the Christmas tree for my sister and I every year, we saw all the movies growing up, and it was really when Return of the Jedi came out that I really became very, very focused on Star Wars… [I] joined all the fan clubs. I really have been a fan ever since.
LP: So how did you go from being a fan to contributing to StarWars.com and writing a Star Wars book?
Richau: It was kind of like a full-circle moment for me, because I worked in film preservation for a long time, and when Revenge of the Sith was filming I actually had a short stint at Skywalker Ranch working in the film archives of Lucasfilm. That was a short contract job, but I ended up moving to Colorado and raising kids and stepping back from full-time work for a while. Then when my kids were older, I wanted to get into writing. They say ‘write what you know,’ and I certainly missed the world of Star Wars. So I started writing about Star Wars and had a goal of writing for StarWars.com. After writing for some fansites, I asked someone who I knew had written for the site, Tricia Barr, if she would give me a letter of introduction to vouch for me, which she did, which was very gracious and generous of her. So I’ve been writing for the official site for about three years. I think it’s good to meet as many other writers [as possible] who are at your level breaking in, but then also just try to have relationships with people who have way more experience, because that can be really helpful.
LP: How did Star Wars: I Love You. I Know. come about? Was this your idea or something Lucasfilm Publishing brought to you?
Richau: Basically I got an email from DK, the publisher of the book. They had the idea of the book, including the title and actually the sections of love that are in the book, like Family and Friendships and “It’s Complicated.” And they were like, ‘We want to hire you to write the text for this book. Do you want to do it?’ And I was going, ‘Yes, of course!’ [laughs] If Star Wars asks you if you want to do something, you always say yes. They’d done several books from the author Christian Blauvelt– Be More Yoda, Be More Leia, Be More Lando— if you read those books, it’s a similar format, although for them all the books are focused on one character. But there’s a quote from them and then a little lesson that you can use in your own life. And this book was different in a fun way because it was based on pairs of characters rather than a whole book being about one character.
LP: I did like that it’s not just about romantic love but also covers friendship and familial relationships. What are some of your favorite examples that are in the book?
Richau: A lot of the friendships are some of my favorites. I love Leia and Holdo’s relationship. I always want to see more female friendships in Star Wars, and so I was really glad to see two women– who could easily have been competitors– who were lifting each other up. I thought that one was fun. I also have a sister, so Paige and Rose Tico was a fun one to write about. To me, it was really important that this book had all kinds of love in it. I think Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship had so much love in it, and of course ended tragically, as a lot of these do actually, sadly. [laughs] Because it’s Star Wars, there’s tragedy. But I loved writing about that relationship because that’s why it was so hard to see [it] dissolve: there was so much love in it from them growing together as a Master and a Padawan.
I also really like that Han and Chewie’s friendship is given as much space in this book as Han and Leia’s romance. Han is in this book a lot, Anakin is in this book a lot, and at first I was trying to have them in it less so I could have other people, but when you’re examining the relationships of Star Wars, one of the reasons why it’s interesting is because Han has so many dynamic relationships with so many different people. That keeps you invested in the story and the ensemble.
LP: For people who may not have picked up the book yet, can you expand on how these lessons were derived from the relationships in Star Wars? What will we learn from Han and Leia or other examples?
Richau: One of my favorites is Kanan and Hera. Their lesson is ‘communication is key.’ I think that they have one of the strongest relationships in Star Wars, but it almost became a funny joke in the end, where they somehow hadn’t communicated to each other that they loved each other, even though they obviously did. I liked that one. I like the one about Poe and BB-8. That lesson is ‘know when you have something special’ and the quote is actually from Leia, which is ‘never underestimate a droid.’ Poe is always giving little pets to BB-8, he’s so excited to see him, but when I was really thinking about their relationship, it reminded me [that] BB-8 is like the person on your team who a lot of people might take for granted, but Poe always treated him like an equal, not as some little droid to only pay attention to every now and then. The whole lesson is ‘don’t take people for granted in your life– your love life or your work life or your personal life.’ This book really tries to talk about all different kinds of relationships you might have with people… or droids, or Wookiees.
LP: One of my favorite examples is using Director Krennic and the Death Star as a lesson about ‘destructive relationships.’ That really made me laugh. Can you talk about some of the more outside-the-box cases like that?
Richau: That delights me, because that’s my proudest moment in the book, actually: getting Orson Krennic in a book about love. [laughs] It’s interesting because there were so many pairs that could have been in this book. That was one of the hardest ones to do. DK said I could have a little bit of animation in there but they really wanted it to be about the films, and so I really tried to find lessons from all eleven films, and then have the friendships and the platonic relationships and the Master/Padawan relationships. But they [also] wanted it to be a light-hearted book and to be funny. And when you look at these relationships, a lot of them really end quite tragically– Shmi and Anakin, there’s a lot of tough emotions in there. It is love, but a lot of it can go dark very quickly. And so I was like, ‘There needs to be some laughs in here. How can I do it?’
One of the things I did was rewatch a lot of the films. I knew I wanted to have Baze and Chirrut in there, and I knew that I wanted to have Galen and Jyn in there, because I’m a huge Rogue One fan. I wanted to get as much Rogue One in there as I could. But I was rewatching that movie, and you see Krennic looking at the Death Star like, ‘Oh, it’s beautiful.’ I’m like, ‘That man’s in love!’ I love Krennic and I’ve never really had a chance to write about him very much. I remember including that in my list and sending it to DK being like, ‘They’re going to think that I’m crazy,’ and they were like, ‘That is exactly what we want.’ [laughs]
LP: This book is in the size and shape of a Valentine’s Day card, and even has a “To:” and “From:” label on the inside cover. Can you talk about how you worked with the design team at DK to make this the ideal Valentine’s Day gift for Star Wars fans?
Richau: I really had no say or control over the graphic design, but I’m really really thrilled with it. It is a book that you can fit in your hand– it’s an easy [gift] to give, and graphically it’s fun with a pink and blue look. It’s different than a lot of Star Wars novelty or non-fiction books. And I love the “To:” and “From:”. I wish I could say that that was my idea. It’s interesting, my name is up front in large [letters] and then in the back there’s a huge list of a whole bunch of people’s names. I kind of wish that they were all up there with me, because they had such a huge impact in the book. It’s not a text-heavy book, so it really is something that you don’t have to read from start to finish. You can just open up to whatever page.
It [also] doesn’t matter if you’ve seen the different movies or not. I’ve had some friends who are not really Star Wars [fans] who bought the book to support, and they were like, ‘Oh, this is fun. I was able to connect to it even though I had no idea who Zeb and Kallus were because I didn’t watch Star Wars Rebels.’ It really is just meant as a fun and lighthearted serotonin boost. It reminded me of why I love Star Wars and why I connected with it so much, and that’s the hope for everyone who reads it.
Star Wars: I Love You. I Know. – Lessons in Love and Friendship is available now wherever books are sold. The audio from this interview will be featured in an upcoming episode of Laughing Place’s Star Wars podcast “Who’s the Bossk?”