Diana Lee Inosanto

"I know people tend to look at martial arts from the perspective of action or pain but, for me, there has always been a philosophical component: it is my ancestry and my heritage."

―Diana Lee Inosanto^[1]

Diana Lee Inosanto is an actress and martial artist who portrayed Morgan Elsbeth in the 2020 second season of The Mandalorian^[2] and the 2023 first season of Ahsoka television series.^[3] She will also reprise the character in the 2024 animation television series Star Wars: Tales of the Empire.^[4] Her father is martial arts expert Dan Inosanto and her uncle and godfather was the legendary Hong Kong–American martial artist and actor Bruce Lee, and both of them passed down their arts and philosophies.^[1]

Following her ancestry, Diana Lee Inosanto had Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do as her foundation and combined various martial arts schools, becoming attached to Filipino martial arts while supplementing them with Japanese and Chinese martial arts, with weapons like the spear as part of such flexibility. She and her father watched the first Star Wars film during its release in 1977 and were excited by the possibility of combining Filipino martial arts with the fictional lightsaber. Indeed, in the 2020 The Mandalorian episode "Chapter 13: The Jedi," Diana Lee Inosanto made her debut as Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth, wielding a beskar spear against the lightsabers of the former Jedi Ahsoka Tano.^[1]

The initial fight choreography in The Mandalorian involves complex moves by Morgan Elsbeth. Much of the stunt team had trained under Diana Lee Inosanto's father and she recognized some of the moves. However, she thought that Elsbeth's actions should be simple as the character was analyzing Ahsoka Tano's abilities, similar in spirit to the samurai in Akira Kurosawa's films that showrunner Dave Filoni said he admires. The actress also improvised some of Elsbeth's moves and was surprised when they were included in the final cut. For the Ahsoka series, Lee Inosanto worked with wushu master and stuntwoman Ming Qiu, reminding the actress of her wushu roots when she incorporated it as a stuntwoman in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Lee Inosanto described her training and choreography with Mind Qiu as "pretty intense," and the two became good friends and "dim sum buddies."^[5]

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Works[]

Filmography[]

Year	Title	Seres	Contribution(s)
2020	"Chapter 13: The Jedi"	The Mandalorian	Morgan Elsbeth^[2]
2023	"Part One: Master and Apprentice"	Ahsoka^[3]
	"Part Two: Toil and Trouble"^[6]
	"Part Three: Time to Fly"^[7]
	"Part Four: Fallen Jedi"^[8]
	"Part Six: Far, Far Away"^[9]
	"Part Seven: Dreams and Madness"^[10]
	"Part Eight: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord"^[11]
2024	"The Path of Fear"	Star Wars: Tales of the Empire	Selena^[12]
	"The Path of Anger"		Morgan Elsbeth^[13]
	"The Path of Hate"^[14]		Morgan Elsbeth^[13]