Andor Creator and Showrunner Tony Gilroy gives a behind-the-scenes look at the Ghorman National Anthem being sung before the Ghorman Massacre. He cites examples of anthems’ place in history, walks through its effect on Syril and Dedra’s self-reflection as characters, and discusses the use of practical sets and the dedicated extras and teams that choreographed this scene.
We got the chance to speak with Tony Gilroy about Andor season two as part of their For Your Consideration press tour!
0:00 Intro
0:28 The Press Tour Experience
1:10 Bringing The Force Into Andor
4:40 How To Write Compelling Star Wars Characters
9:01 Star Wars, Fascism, And Colonialism
12:32 Tony’s Recommended Reading List
15:36 Star Wars As A Gateway
16:43 Andor As A Timeless Piece Of Art
17:45 Andor And The Real World
19:35 Tony’s Star Wars Fandom
20:38 Advice For The Future Of Star Wars
23:33 The Best Day Of Our Lives?
The Andor showrunner recently joined K-2SO actor Alan Tudyk and supervising sound editor Margit Pfeiffer for a day at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
By StarWars.com Team
Inside the lobby at Lucasfilm headquarters, fans flock to take pictures with Darth Vader’s armor and a statue of K-2SO, and attempt to further glimpse inside the hallowed halls. For a few lucky fans last Monday, however, stopping by led to a photo with the actual K-2SO, who was waiting to start a tour of his own.
Alan Tudyk, the acclaimed actor and man behind the machine, hadn’t been to Lucasfilm’s San Francisco campus since Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. “This is the coolest day ever,” beamed the father of the group, who had brought his two sons along for the Star Wars fun.
Joining Tudyk on his tour was Tony Gilroy, Andor’s creator and executive producer, and Pablo Hidalgo of the Lucasfilm Story Group, who led the duo on an in-depth look around the historic Presidio campus. “Do you get sick of me talking about you?” Gilroy jokingly asked Hidalgo, “I talk about you all the time.” Indeed, their close collaboration throughout the production of the show led to the appearance of Yavin 4 in early episodes of Season 2 and a new understanding of the “Tarkin Massacre” on Ghorman…
In anticipation of the three-episode series finale of Andor, join Diego Luna and Creator & Executive Producer Tony Gilroy as they take us behind-the-scenes of the show’s final season. Diego and Tony will be joined by special guests Adria Arjona, Denise Gough, Elizabeth Dulau, Genevieve O’Reilly and Kyle Soller for live questions and reflections across their Star Wars journeys. With special appearances by some of your favorite creators including @HeroesReforged, @CatherineLaSalle, and @MaceAhWindu.
Watch the special live stream event for a chance to see your questions answered on YouTube May 13 ahead of the Season 2 finale on Disney+ that evening.
By StarWars.com Team
It’s almost time to send Cassian Andor off as he takes his final steps to Scarif in the Andor Season 2 finale next week.
To mark the occasion, the end of a five year journey for the cast and crew behind the critically-acclaimed and beloved Star Wars series, Star Wars YouTube will host a special LIVE Q&A — Andor Season 2 with Tony Gilroy & Diego Luna — covering the momentous events of Season 2.
Join creator Tony Gilroy and series star Diego Luna (Cassian Andor himself), Tuesday, May 13 at 12 pm ET / 9 am PT as they’re joined by special guests Denise Gough (Dedra Meero), Kyle Soller (Syril Karn), Elizabeth Dulau (Kleya Marki), Genevieve O’Reilly (Mon Mothma) and Adria Arjona (Bix Caleen) to talk about the journey so far.
“I think the banality of evil runs through the entire show,” Gilroy tells StarWars.com. “Season 1 is about the education and radicalization of Cassian, about the making of a revolutionary. Season 2 is…you could call it the ‘Winds of War.’ It’s a whole bunch of characters that hopefully you really care about and suddenly there’s that inevitable moment where things have just gone too far and the inertia of the Rebellion and Empire conflict is too strong. It’s coming. There’s no way to stop it. And I think it’s about a lot of people, ordinary people, being pressured by this unstoppable force of war that’s coming.”…
Is there something you’ve always wondered while watching Season 1 of Andor? Submit your questions now in the Live chat.
In anticipation of Season 2 of Andor, join Creator & Executive Producer Tony Gilroy live as he takes us behind-the-scenes of the critically-acclaimed first season. Tony will be joined by Adria Arjona, Genevieve O’Reilly and Duncan Pow for live questions, Season 1 reflections and surprises you won’t want to miss. With special appearances by some of your favorite creators including @jenmarkham, @StarWarsExplained, and @StruggleNation.
Watch all episodes of Andor Season 1 streaming on Disney+ and streaming on Hulu until April 22. Andor Season 2 premieres April 22 only on Disney+
Disney+ streaming series Andor picked up multiple Emmy nominations today, setting a new critical benchmark for Star Wars on TV in the process. All told, the Rogue One prequel series brought in eight nominations this morning, including for writing, directing, visual effects, sound editing, music, and cinematography—as well as an overall nomination for Best Drama Series. It was enough to bring series creator Tony Gilroy out of WGA strike seclusion to do a few interviews—although not enough to keep him from bringing up reasons why the writers strike continues to be important…
Spoiler warning: This article contains story details and plot points from the entirety of Andor Season 1.
Andor isn’t like the Star Wars we’ve known. It announces this to us in its opening sequence, which finds Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor skulking forward in the rain, heading into a brothel, and minutes later, accidentally killing a local officer before deliberately dispatching a second. As far as inciting incidents go, this is a far cry from bickering droids escaping Darth Vader and his forces.
Which is all to say that Andor was a gamble. The Disney+ Original series doubled down on the grounded tone of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, taking the galaxy far, far away to a far more real-world, messier place than it’s ever been. But for Tony Gilroy, Rogue One co-writer and creator of the series, deviating from what Star Wars typically is never gave him a second thought.
“I don’t worry about that at all,” he tells StarWars.com. “I worry about the storytelling. I worry about the logic of it. I worry about the plotting. I worry about the characters. I worry about the story making sense and things tying together.”
It seems to have worked out for Gilroy, as Andor proved to resonate with both critics and fans. The series just wrapped up its memorable first season, of which Gilroy spoke with StarWars.com at length. The 12-episode season follows Cassian Andor five years before the events of Rogue One, as circumstances take him from drifting loner to Imperial prisoner to, finally, a believer in the burgeoning rebellion against the Empire. Throughout, there’s nary a mention of Jedi; thankfully, Lucasfilm and Disney were okay with that.
“I think everybody was kind of aware on their side that there was not only an opportunity, but a need for a new lane,” Gilroy says. “If there’s a billion beings in that galaxy, surely there’s a billion stories there, and they don’t all have to do with lightsabers and Jedi and Luke and Darth Vader. I mean, other people are living their lives, and there are incredible events that are happening.”…
The executive producer tells StarWars.com why it’s important to get behind the heroes and the villains of a story. Kristin Baver
It’s hard not to root for Dedra Meero sometimes. The ISB inspector on the trail of the burgeoning rebellion is the hero of her own story, overcoming obstacles and staggering odds on the quest for a complete picture of the anarchy in store for the Empire.
And that’s exactly how Andor creator and executive producer Tony Gilroy wants you to feel. Through a motley crew of new characters and some familiar faces, the writer behind the acclaimed new Star Wars live-action series, now streaming on Disney+, purposefully explores the gray area between good and evil with deft nuance.
Even when we know the minions of the Empire are the bad guys, we still can’t help but find them a little relatable in their struggle. “I can’t imagine writing black and white. I mean, I have believed in every villain I’ve ever written, you know?” Gilroy tells StarWars.com. “You’ve really gotta believe in him. You gotta love him. You gotta know why they’re doing it. You gotta feel for it. And there has to be a reason for it. You’ve gotta get behind everybody.”…
This week in Star Wars, we check out all the exciting Star Wars reveals from New York Comic Con and recap episode 5 of Andor streaming now on Disney+. Plus, Andor creator and executive producer Tony Gilroy drops in to chat about writing a spy thriller set in a galaxy far, far away.
With the arrival of the three-episode series premiere, now streaming on Disney+, the creator/executive producer and cast discuss their revolutionary look at the Rebellion. Kristin Baver
When Rogue One: A Star Wars Story debuted in theaters in 2016, it was lauded as a gritty new installment in the galaxy far, far away, a previously unexplored chapter that took viewers to the brink of the Galactic Civil War raging throughout the original trilogy. With Andor, the new Star Wars series streaming exclusively on Disney+ beginning today, creator and executive producer Tony Gilroy has returned to tell not only the origin story of unlikely hero Cassian Andor (played once again by Diego Luna), but — perhaps more importantly — take fans deep into the sometimes-ugly heart of the brewing rebellion. This previously unexplored perspective on the history of the Rebel Alliance finds Andor in a raw and unflinching portrayal of the personal sacrifices made in the course of challenging the Empire’s rule and the people at work in the trenches on both sides.
The show’s existence owes a debt to the enduring popularity of the Star Wars zeitgeist, Gilroy noted in a recent press conference. “There’s this huge, dedicated Star Wars community that shows up. That’s what gave us the money and the momentum and the ability to make a show that’s this insanely big, this abundant, and this difficult to make.” But he hopes the story of Cassian’s journey from petty criminal to Rebel Intelligence officer daring to steal the Death Star plans will offer a fresh take on the space fantasy as enticing for existing fans as it is for new ones. “There’s nothing cynical about our show. The word we use more every day…is real. We want to make this real. This place is real to us. Our show is designed that this could be your entry point to Star Wars. We’re doing a show that does not require any prior knowledge whatsoever to get involved.”Gilroy recognizes that it’s a risk to pen a Star Wars story with no lightsaber-swinging Jedi Knights — one that feels more akin to the spy thrillers and sweeping dramas on his screenwriting résumé. “Can we bring something that’s so intense emotionally and seems so true and has the smallest domestic dramas and the smallest interpersonal relationships that are dropped down in the midst of the epic tectonic revolutionary historical moments where people have to make huge decisions? Can we attract another audience that’s interested in that as well? Can we marry those two things together?” Gilroy asks. “That’s the gamble. That’s what we’re trying to do.”…
Details are a bit fuzzy at this point, but we know Diego Luna got the call from Tony Gilroy explaining the outline at some point in mid-2019, as the actor told Vanity Fair earlier this year, and he was instantly on board. (Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO at the time, had confirmed in late 2018 that Luna would be back in the role, when Schiff was still attached.) The series was reworked from the ground up, and it was originally going to run for five seasons, each one covering one year of Cassian’s life, leading to his introduction in RogueOne. However, after being in production of season 1 for two years, Gilroy realized that he couldn’t possibly do that four more times. He said:
“You just couldn’t possibly physically make five years of the show. I mean, Diego would be, like, 65. I’d be in a nursing home. We were panicked. We can’t sign on to this forever.”
His solution was simple but elegant. Instead of making four more seasons, Gilroy decided to crunch the outline for each season into a three-episode arc and make another twelve episodes that are essentially season 2. He borrowed the idea from the model they had already used for season 1, where each block of three episodes constitutes a singular story arc. Star Wars: The CloneWars fans should already be used to this. He explained it to The Playlist as follows…
Total Film Magazine has released a brand-new image from the upcoming StarWars series Andor that features Kyle Soller as Syril Karn and Kathryn Hunter (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) as Syril’s mother, Eedy Karn. Syril is an officer of the Imperial Security Bureau who has a “possessive” obsession with Cassian Andor, as Soller recently told SFX Magazine.
In addition to debuting the new image, Total Film also had a brief interview with the actor, who clarified the relationship between his character and his mother:
“He doesn’t have a father. He was raised by his mother, who is sort of the stage mother from hell. He has an extreme sense of need to impress, and fill a hole in himself. And so that really is about ascending to the top of whatever field he’s in. The field he’s chosen is one of restriction and complete control, and one of domination. I think we’ve been able to thread that through with the scenes that Syril has with his mother.”…
Total Film Magazine had the chance to talk briefly with Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy about the plans for season 2, and with Diego Luna, who is over the moon about the show. In addition, the magazine also released two new images from the first season, which will debut its first three episodes September 21st on Disney Plus.
First, Gilroy reiterated what he said at Star Wars Celebration about the overall structure of the show. Andor will be two seasons, the first season covering the year 5 BBY, that is, five years before the events of Rogue One, and the second season covering the 4 years in between season 1 and the movie. As Gilroy told Total Film, the second season will be structured in blocks of three episodes, each one covering each of those four years:
“We have four blocks of three [episodes] coming up [for season 2]. And each block will move you one year closer to Rogue One. And because it’s a year [each time], we can do something really fascinating narratively that you would never have the chance to do in a film. It’s exciting.”…
Lucasfilm released earlier this month their production briefing on Andor, a 29-page document available to the press where they detail the most relevant aspects of everything and everyone involved with the upcoming Star Wars series on Disney Plus. In the document, the company confirmed that three-time Oscar nominee Nicholas Britell (Moonlight, Succession) is composing the music for the show.
Gilroy first explained how integral the music is to Star Wars, and how that carried over to Andor, though in new and unexpected ways
Reports on Britell joining Andor began circulating earlier this year, but it looks like he’s been attached for a long time. In the document, it is said that Britell and Gilroy have been working on the score for two years, long before it was time to get into the recording booth and, from the sound of things, even before filming started. However, as Gilroy explains, it looks like they needed the extra time
Andor will have a central theme, Gilroy said, though it will be slightly different from episode to episode…
