Just as he redefined the legal drama with the Oscar-winning movie Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy has made arguably the most serious Star Wars streaming series to date in Disney+/Lucasfilm’s Andor, which is steeped in the binary of a burgeoning morose utilitarian empire that’s dominating the denizens of the universe.
Set before the events of the 2016 prequel, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which focused on the band of misfit spies who team up to steal the Death Star plans (which are in turn used by the Rebellion to take out the massive space station in 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope), Andor follows Rogue One’s Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) — known for being a thief, a liar and a cheat — as he becomes a lynchpin in the Rebellion’s rise against the Empire. Gilroy wound up writing on Rogue One and handled additional shoots and edits on that Gareth Edwards-directed movie.
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The series, in allegorical fashion, hits close to home in echoing a lot of what we see on the news, from the rise of the Trump era, the liberals who seek to undermine it, the Mexican border crisis, and the war in Ukraine. In an interview before the WGA strike, Gilroy and Luna share more insights on Season 1. At the time, they were halfway through production of Season 2. Gilroy announced in early May that he had ceased all non-writing producing duties on the series due to the strike. Production continued. All scripts for Season 2 were completed ahead of the WGA’s contract expiration. [These interviews occurred before the WGA strike].
Diego, what were you privy to about the development of Andor before Tony arrived?
Diego Luna: It was very vague. It was more like it was the idea of what could we get with this premise. We know what Cassian’s capable of, but we didn’t know where he came from, and what made him the right guy to lead this mission. Rogue One is this film about an event where you get to know these amazing characters, but you don’t know what happened to them before. So, it was about answering that, and for a long time, there was a battle between how far we go and how much is it going to be about the relationship between him and his droid? It wasn’t until Tony came that we got to this very specific idea of, let’s go five years prior.
On Rogue One, did both of you interact?
Tony Gilroy: We’re not going to get specific about what happened on Rogue One. We spent a lot of time together. We spent 10 months together, but we’re not going to go beyond that.
What parts of the original movies inspired you and made you want to expand on canon?
Gilroy: I was there in the audience in 1977. That’s one of those things, it was like seeing Avatar or Apocalypse Now at the Ziegfeld [Theatre]. It wasn’t just going to a movie; it was an event. It was a cultural passage. I was an audience member along the way, but it would be disingenuous for me to say that there was some burning desire or some issue that I wanted to rectify in the Star Wars canon. No, for me, it was a much different point of entry.
I had seen one of the versions [of the previous drafts of Andor] Kathy [Kennedy] sent, just as a point of interest, not as an employment request, and I thought it was incredibly well done. But I thought it was totally limiting and claustrophobic in a way.
It was really Cassian and the droid — Butch and Sundance — and they go out and do all these things. So, I wrote a long letter back to her: if you’re going to do it, maybe you should do something this insane. And it was a year later when they came back and said, “You know, we kind of thought about it. Would you be into doing that insane version that you pitched?” I had no burning desire, I had no issue in Star Wars that I wanted to rectify.
My attitude [toward the series] was everything has to be real. I’ve done all kinds of movies and fixed movies. My whole thing is it’s got to be real, it’s got to be vivid, you’ve got to really be desperate to know what happens next. And if I can hit those three, and I can break your heart in the bargain, that’s what I’m going for.
On keeping it real, there’s a line in the prologue of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace about the taxation of trade routes. You have been unafraid to go into the taxation of trade routes in this show, meaning you got really granular about the inner workings of the Star Wars universe. Was there ever any concern that the series would be too heady for the average Star Wars fan?
Gilroy: No, they yearn for it. As long as you’re making up things that are interesting, and consistent, and really non-cynical and really detailed, and really fascinating, and as long as they don’t violate some basic thing [in canon]. I’m just creating canon every episode. Our main navigational Star Wars piece of information is the calendar, is the five years that we’re covering. And obviously, our last block is the last three days before Rogue One. So, the last shot will be walking into Rogue One. So, you can imagine that we have to do a lot of interlacing at the end, with the calendar.
In building Cassian Andor, where did you draw inspiration from?
Luna: I can’t be specific, because then it ruins the whole… if you answer this with specificity, then it’s like, Cassian is this, you know? I’ll tell you, there’s so much inspiration that comes from growing up in Mexico, knowing the history of Latin America, of so many people who are devoting their lives for change. I’ve been witnessing from a very privileged position all my life, living in a country that serves as a way for many to try to change their lives, because there’s no opportunities, because of what oppression is; oppression, violence, corruption, and witnessing that. Also, crossing this border over and over. There’s a lot of that. A lot of those stories that I’ve heard over the years, that are represented here. And it’s interesting, because they were there from the moment I was thinking of Cassian in Rogue One, before I met Tony and after I met Tony.
How long does it to take for you to put an entire season together?
Gilroy: Oh my God, to do this… I started on this in Scotland, two and-a-half years ago. 18 months to get the scripts ready, 18 months to get here, and then another 18 months to finish.
Luna: Three years.
Gilroy: In the end, it’ll be five years of my life. So, I’m three and a half years in. I’ve got another year and a half to go.
How big was the writers room?
Gilroy: Well, I did it in a weird way, because I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was desperate, and I was afraid. I’d never done it before. I panicked, so the first time around, I had about a hundred pages. I had the beginning, the middle, and the end. I knew a bunch of stuff, I knew where we wanted to go, I knew the structure. I brought on Beau Willimon, who I worked for on House of Cards, a good friend, and my brother Dan, and I actually trust him quite well.
I knew they could play really hard, really fast, and we went into a room for five or six days with this sort of big, 100-page piece of meat. And we had one of the most exciting creative experiences I’ve ever had. I mean, it was just wildly energetic, and brutal, and effective. But here’s the thing, it wasn’t just the three of us that were in the room. Sanne Wohlenberg, who’s the [executive] producer, was in the room, sitting, not at the table, but one row back, and Luke Hull, who’s the production designer — who I’d been collaborating with for four months before I got to that room — was in the room. He’s my primary creative collaborator on the story. And so, we chewed that up, within five days. We filled in the blanks over five days, very powerful days.
When you’re outlining a script, and a plot point just feels same old, same old, how do you break it and make a story fresh?
Gilroy: You throw it away and start over. For example, the prison. I have all this stuff. It’s like, can this work? But I have a big gap. I go, “Man, I’d really like this guy [Cassian] to go to prison here. This would be really good, would spread out the time. I’d like to put him on ice for a while. This is the point in his education where I’d really like him to be part of a mini revolution. I’d like to see a little Spartacus, and I’d like to really see him do it through somebody else.”
We love prison movies so much. And if we can’t do something completely unusual and fresh, then we’re not going to do it. We’ll do something else. So, that’s the mandate: for the whole day, we start, what kind of prison? What does it do? What is it? Weapons all away? What if it’s clean? What if it’s antiseptic? What if there’s very few guards? What if they’re building pieces for the Death Star? My God, what if they have electric floors? Holy sh*t, that means you don’t wear any shoes, and then boots became… I think Beau did, like, three boot drafts. We’re like, boots were everything. Every now and then, I have to do something a little ordinary here and there, just for utility. But 99 percent of the time, the mandate is, no scene doesn’t have a hook. No scene is a scene that we did exactly before, that I’ve ever done before; we’re always trying to push it.
Is there more Star Wars for you both after this?
Luna: What kept me sane when Rogue One was finally offered to me is that he had a very definitive end, and there was no way to go back. I really went home thinking it’s over, took all the sh*t from my kids, like, “You took us there and you’re not invited anymore? You’re a one-hit wonder?”
Then this happened, and it comes with the same premise, and I’m just going to stick to that idea, obviously, because it’s been so demanding, so hard, so interesting, but also so weird, and so different from everything I thought was essential in my life.
Gilroy: I mean, look, you know, most of your readership is in the business. People know there’s no crying in baseball, and there’s no whining about how hard you work, but man… I have a friend who runs a dairy farm, and I used to go up there and work at the dairy farm. The cows have to be milked twice a day, every day. It doesn’t matter if your leg just got cut off. They have to be milked; it never ends.
And it’s been three and a half years of dairy farm. I have no idea what I want to do. I am like, literally, maybe get in touch with a bunch of the friends who I haven’t seen for the last three and a half years, maybe go to some of the places I used to love to go, that I haven’t been able to go for the last three and a half years. Maybe try to get my wife to remember that we didn’t used to do this show. I really want to finish strong and stick to the landing, and take a very big, deep breath.
The way you’ve mapped out your second season narratively is unlike any other show.
Gilroy: When we come back later, it’ll be literally like a Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And then, we’ll jump a year, and then it’ll be, like, four or five days, and then we’ll jump a year, and then there’ll be another four or five days, and then we jump a year, and be another four or five days. I don’t know whether anybody ever did it before because I don’t know if anybody had a chance to do it before. We’re in the brand-new era of making these shows. These shows are all new. This whole idea of how to make these shows, and the economic scale of them is new, and everything’s new.
There’s one dangler you’ve left from Season 1 — Cassian looking for his sister in the brothel in the first episode. Is that a string you’re going to pull on in Season 2?
Gilroy: I don’t really want to get into spoilers. What’s the gracious answer on this? One of the important things in this show, because of the expanse of it, and because of the detail of it, is knowing when and where to make things intricate and have them tie together, and the other side of it is knowing when to let things go and have chaos. And because that’s what life is like and finding that balance that suits the storytelling is part of it.
So, I don’t feel beholden to what you’re talking about in any way, but there are a lot of things that we do that are intricate, that we weed along the way. So that’s a complicated answer.