Maz Kanata is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise. Introduced in the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, she is a computer-generated character voiced and performed through motion capture by Lupita Nyong'o. Maz, a former pirate and smuggler, is more than 1,000 years old and manages an interstellar tavern in a castle on the fictional planet Takodana. While Maz's small role in the trilogy has been criticized, Nyong'o's performance and the technical aspects of the character have been praised by critics. For her performance in The Force Awakens, Nyong'o was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.

The Force Awakens writer/director J. J. Abrams told Entertainment Weekly in November 2015, "I wanted to do [Maz] as a puppet originally, but once we figured out the things that she was required to do, it felt like performance capture was the way to go." With most of the other creatures in her scenes being practical effects, Abrams noted:

Maz needed to look and feel and be just like one of those creatures. And given her mobility, and given the role that she played, it became clear that that was one creature where we should use the tool of CG. But the performance was all Lupita. She was there on set, and we did capture sessions afterwards as well.

Abrams said, "I had some specific ideas about how she would work and what she would do. I had this pitch about these goggles that she wore. Her eyes are an important aspect of her character, and you'll see how it plays out." Abrams told his home town newspaper, the Palisadian-Post, that he based Maz on his late Palisades Charter High School English teacher Rose Gilbert. He said:

We really wanted the story to feel authentic, despite being a wild fantasy. I mentioned Rose in an early story meeting as a sort of timeless, wise figure that I'd actually known in my life ... While we experimented with many looks and styles before settling on the character's final design, Rose was always at the center of the inspiration for Maz.

For The Rise of Skywalker, Maz was created using animatronic puppetry.

Nyong'o's meeting with Abrams about an undisclosed role was reported in March 2014, and her casting in the film was first announced on April 29, 2014. Nyong'o was revealed to be playing a performance capture-CGI character, pirate Maz Kanata, in a May 2015 Vanity Fair photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz. The character was first heard in the official TV spot for The Force Awakens, released in November 2015. Days later Abrams confirmed fan speculation that Maz was pictured on the film's theatrical poster, which had been previously released in October 2015, as a diminutive alien wearing large goggles. In December 2015, the orange-skinned character appeared briefly in a video for the Disney XD channel, featuring a scene in which John Boyega's character Finn draws his lightsaber.

Of Abrams' emphasis on the character's eyes, Nyong'o commented, "As an actor for films, your eyes are a lot of the way you communicate anyway. So it was definitely a gift to have that be the means to her magic as a motion-capture character." Nyong'o was also coached on performance-capture work by her The Force Awakens costar Andy Serkis, who portrays CGI character Supreme Leader Snoke and had previously portrayed numerous other motion-capture roles in other films. She said, "The biggest advice he gave me, that was so important to hold on to, is a motion-capture character you develop the same way as any other. You have to understand who the character is and what makes them who they are."