How Adam Driver Feels About His Shirtless Last Jedi Scene

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Did the surprise scene in Star Wars: The Last Jedi that got a fair few fans hot and bothered actually bother the actor involved?

Described by the film's writer and director Rian Johnson as the "beefcake" scene of The Last Jedi, the moment in question features Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey (Daisy Ridley) engaging in a Force-bending conversation where the pair can see one another's surroundings despite being countless planets apart. Kylo shocks Rey at the start of their chat when he appears shirtless. Clearly startled and unsure of how to appropriately respond, Rey asks Kylo to cover up with a cloth, a towel, anything, since it's a little more than uncomfortable for her to converse with the potential new First Order leader as he's half-naked and dripping wet. 

While Rey may have been flustered by the whole thing, Kylo actor Adam Driver wasn't. According to Johnson, Driver had a positive experience, due in large part to his intense physical preparation that left him looking quite photogenic. 

"Adam looks so d*** good because he'd been training hardcore for the past six months for those fight scenes. I'm like, 'Eh. He looks so good. We should put him up there,'" the filmmaker told Entertainment Weekly, adding that he wasn't shy in the slightest. "He's good. He's great. He knew he looked good."

As for how the Last Jedi creative team arrived at the nearly-bare moment, Johnson noted that the scene was used to enhance the intimacy of Kylo and Rey's relationship through the Force and to highlight the characters' vulnerability. 

"It's all about those Force connection scenes. The keyword being 'intimacy,'" he stated. "Why not step that up? The idea that, what's even more uncomfortable having a conversation face to face with a person you don't want to, is if they're half-naked during it, while you're having to do it. And so it was just another way of kind of disrobing Kylo literally and figuratively a little bit more, and pushing that sense of these conversations becoming increasingly more intimate."

The Last Jedi sound supervisor Ren Klyce offered a practical explanation for Kylo's wardrobe choice (or lack thereof): it was to prove to viewers that Rey could actually see him and not just hear him. "The way in which [Johnson] decided to create the Force connection [was] by just simply doing vertical cuts without using any CG... it's pure simplicity in terms of filmmaking with visual cuts. We cut to her side; we cut to Kylo Ren; we cut to her; and back and forth," Klyce said. "[Kylo Ren being shirtless] was important to establish what she was actually seeing. Was she hearing his voice or seeing his face or just his eyes? And so that [shirtless scene] is to inform the audience, 'Oh, she can see his body' [and] it's also good humor."

Looks like most of our questions regarding Kylo's shirtlessness have been answered. Well, all but one: How exactly did Kylo get so ripped?