Adam Driver Was Totally Fine With That Shirtless Scene in The Last Jedi

In case you’ve been living under a rock on Jakku this month, you know that Star Wars: The Last Jedi just hit theaters, and brought with it a truly memorable and moving performance by Adam Driver as Kylo Ren/Ben Solo…who at one point is seen shirtless. Naturally, viewers are sort of losing their chill over the scene.

But it’s cool, because Driver was totally down to do it.

The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson told People, “He’s good. He’s great,” Johnson said of whether or not Driver was shy. “He knew he looked good,” Johnson added. “Adam looks so damn 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.’”

And it’s not like Driver’s a stranger to top-half nudity on screen; over six seasons playing Adam Sackler on HBO’s Girls, he was shirtless probably half the time.

Now, get your mind just a little bit out of the gutter because the toplessness was also important for movie reasons. (Small spoiler) Kylo Ren doesn’t just walk around without a shirt on; he’s in his room when he is suddenly connected, psychically, through the Force, with Rey (Daisy Ridley), and not for the first time. So her comment about him maybe putting a towel on establishes that when they are connected, she can see his body, plus it makes her even more uncomfortable, which heightens her emotions in the scene. As Johnson put it, it’s all about intimacy, “And the idea that this was a way to just, 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.”

So, that makes sense! People are still having fun meme-ing the moment, though, and…texting it…to Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Watch: Adam Driver Talks About His Most Favorite Birthday Gift Ever

Related: Of Course, Carrie Fisher Wrote Some of the Jokes in Star Wars: The Last Jedi