Andor creator Tony Gilroy is a firm believer that rules can be liberating, at least when it comes to framing a packed two-season series that serves as a prequel for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
“One of the reasons that the show is as precise and resonant and whole and thematic as it is, is that we know exactly where we’re going. We knew exactly where we were gonna end up from the very beginning,” Gilroy said during a panel at the Television Academy’s inaugural Televerse Festival in Los Angeles on Saturday. “I find that liberating.”
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Gilroy was joined onstage by his brothers, Dan Gilroy and John Gilroy, who served as writer and editor on the series, respectively.
As the Disney+ series has come to a close, landing 14 Emmy nominations this season — despite controversial snubs for stars Diego Luna and Genevieve O’Reilly — the Gilroy brothers dove deeply into pivotal moments from Season 2, including the tragic Ghorman Massacre, the backstory of Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), and the sacrifice Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) makes for the resistance while hiding a secret from Cassian Andor (Luna), the father of her unborn child.
Tony said that it was a “legit impulse” to have the final moments of the show reveal that Bix is pregnant, because he didn’t want the series “just going off into the bummer of [Andor] dying” in Rogue One.
“Let’s be really honest, it doesn’t hurt me when I can tell [Walt Disney CEO] Bob Iger there’s a baby,” Gilroy explained. “And he can name it, and he can sex it, and they can do whatever they want with it.”
However, Gilroy admitted that convincing the Andor team that Bix’s choice to leave Cassian was necessary proved especially difficult.
“Her willingness to leave him for the greater good was an issue that a lot of people had questions about all the way through,” Tony said. “‘Would it work?’ and ‘will it be delivered?’ and ‘are you going to be able to get us there?’ All this stuff. It really helps for anybody who has any doubts. You get to the end, you go, ‘Oh my God, she was pregnant.’”
Tony Gilroy and Genevieve O’Reilly on the set of AndorLucasfilm/Disney
That moment of hope is preceded by several tragedies throughout the season, which was narratively divided into three-episode arcs, allowing the show to jump ahead in time. Perhaps the most notable was the Ghorman Massacre, in which the Empire unleashes extreme violence on peaceful protestors who live on the planet Ghorman — an incident that catalyzes the Rebellion.
Giving editing credit to his brother John, Dan added that earlier episodes were leading up to the Ghorman Massacre.
“There’s so many swirling plot lines,” Dan said. “This is just a constant building of suspense and tension and energy.”
While the Ghorman sequence was “always on the calendar,” according to Tony, he and his team ultimately had to condense five seasons of storytelling into two.
“We were deep in shooting the first season, and I was trying to come up with a second season, and Diego and I, literally, we’re sitting in the backyard of a little hotel in Scotland having a drink and we’re like, ‘What are we f–king going to do? We can’t do five years of this show. I mean, it’s just impossible,” Tony explained. “[Diego would] be ancient.”
Not only did it take 22 months to produce a single season, but Tony was also concerned about the potential cost and how Disney would respond. So when they landed on the timeskips, he said they felt “lucky.”
“We were like, ‘Wow,’ and Disney was like, ‘OK, yeah, because we don’t want to pay for like 90 seasons of this,’” Tony added.
However, working on the story as a series versus a film gave the team more breathing room, with both storytelling and edits.
“Editing is kind of like finding the truth,” John said, “and it just gave you that couple extra seconds per scene that you’re allowed to find the truth.”
That truth extended to the audience eventually finding out Luthen’s backstory and his connection to Rebellion partner Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulao).
“My original reason for wanting a standalone was because I didn’t want anybody, after the show was over, to be defining that relationship,” Tony said, also noting his intention to hold out on the explanation for as long as possible.
What the Andor team didn’t intend was for the show to end up eerily similar to real-world events.
“Mon [Mothma]’s speech was so inordinately, powerfully important to the show. And to me personally,” Dan said about writing her speech, which followed the Ghorman massacre.
“Throughout Andor, the first two seasons covering the five years, what you’re really watching is the Senate’s descent into total Emperor control,” Dan said. “So to sit down and go, that’s the assignment. I’m going to write an assignment where I’m talking to these two audiences while events in the world are mirroring what this is.”
“I was getting choked up writing it because these are massively important elements in our lives, particularly right now,” he added.
As the series continued, the resemblance to reality, Tony said, became uncanny.
“Things were fomenting as we’re going, but the detail with which the world has just grafted onto our show and started replicating what we were doing is incredibly sad and shocking to us,” he said, recalling how U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla from California was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security press conference the week Andor was showing the Ghorman senator being arrested in the Galactic Senate.
“Our internal chat group is like, ‘What the f–k?’” he said.
While Tony was well prepared to write a series about authoritarianism and rebellion, what he said he’s especially proud of was the ability for the show to resonate even beyond the screen.
”I don’t think I’ve ever convinced anybody in my family or at a dinner table to change their opinion about anything, ever,” he said. “I feel happy or I feel affirmed that there are people out there that the show seems to have affected in some way that makes them think about courage.”
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