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.

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.

"[2] Abrams told his home town newspaper, the Palisadian-Post, that he based Maz on his late Palisades Charter High School English teacher Rose Gilbert.

[6] 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.

[2] Days later Abrams confirmed fan speculation that Maz was pictured on the film's theatrical poster,[2] which had been previously released in October 2015,[8] as a diminutive alien wearing large goggles.

[2] Entertainment Weekly's Anthony Breznican noted, "Maz is this movie's wise, ancient alien with connections to the mystical side of the galaxy.

"[2] Of the character's alien species and planetary origins, Abrams said that though The Force Awakens does not answer these questions, more information about Maz is forthcoming "in other venues".

"[13] In December 2015, producer Kathleen Kennedy confirmed that Nyong'o was among those who would reprise their roles in the forthcoming sequel to The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

[14] In the film, Maz appears in one brief scene via hologram, aiding Poe Dameron, Finn and Rose Tico by instructing them to find the Master Codebreaker in Canto Bight.

Maz appears in the short form animated series Lego Star Wars: The Resistance Rises in the 2016 episode "Hunting for Han".

[25] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times named Maz one of the film's "miraculous creatures",[26] and James Robins of the New Zealand Listener deemed the character "a charmingly rendered alien".

[28] Conversely, Matt Goldberg of Collider described the character as "the bar-owner/Yoda stand-in/exposition mouthpiece" and wrote, "What could have been a strong addition to the franchise instead reeks of the film’s attempt to mimic what works well in the previous movies.

"[29] The Force Awakens received seven Visual Effects Society Award nominations, including one for Outstanding Animated Performance in a Photoreal Feature for Maz Kanata.