In the run-up to Andor Season 2, now streaming on Disney+, creator and executive producer Tony Gilroy got in on the fun during a live stream with host Ash Crossan, and they brought some members of the Andor cast along with them.
There was plenty to explore about the critically-acclaimed first season, with a few hints about what’s to come. Here are six new insights from the discussion….
1. Tony Gilroy’s favorite scene from Season 1 might surprise you.
It’s a quiet moment on Morlana One at Corporate Security headquarters, but the meeting between Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and Chief Hyne (Rupert Vansittart) is Tony Gilroy’s favorite scene from Season 1. His reasons are those of a storyteller eagerly watching an audience respond to his work on the screen.
“If you make a movie…if you’re a director or a writer, when you’re watching your [own] screening, there’s always a moment where you’re like, ‘God, if I could just get to that point, then I know everything will be okay,’” Gilroy explained. “The scene for me is in episode one when Syril and Chief Hyne are together…. It’s the scene where I relax when people are watching the show.”
2. Adria Arjona has a Bix tattoo.
“This character means so much,” said Adria Arjona during her appearance on the live stream. The Bix Caleen actor took her role to heart and chose a distinctive way to commemorate the experience. “The opportunity of being in Andor, in Star Wars…changed my life,” she continued. “I’d never done anything like this before. It really challenged me as an actor. I just love her so much and I love everything that she represents. I even have a little tattoo. I remember the last day on Season 2 on set, I couldn’t comprehend that I wasn’t going to be her again, or that I wasn’t going to portray her. I’m still wrapping [my head] around that.”
3. What’s an accelerationist? An antiquities dealer who can quick-change a wig.
For Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), Gilroy needed an organizer, a recruiter, “somebody who was at the center of something,” as he put it. While developing Season 1, he landed on a gallery owner who trades in antiques, but who is in fact what Gilroy describes as an accelerationist. “That’s the term…for a rebel leader or a leader who wants to make things worse to provoke change.”
Gilroy explained that, in writing Season 2, he’s discovered more about this elusive yet central character. “We’ll learn a lot about Luthen and who he was before,” the showrunner noted, “but we’ll also…see a guy who built a start-up company in his garage, and [with] Aldhani he goes public, and it’s going to be the stress of how do you take your little revolution and all the work you’ve done for 15 years, how do you go public with that and how do you go large? So, we’re going to watch him under a great deal of stress.”
4. Genevieve O’Reilly still can’t get over a conversation that hangs over Season 2.
Financier Davo Sculdun’s (Richard Dillane) meeting with Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) and Tay Kolma (Ben Miles) in episode 10 has left lingering questions. Joining the discussion, O’Reilly commented that it was “a juicy scene” that “you really don’t get…in television…. What you have to reveal and what you have to hide all at once is the trick. That’s my job at hand. The dexterity of that is such a gift to give an actor…. There’s no movement, there’s nothing to hide behind…. It’s really relying on the actors and…the interplay between the actors.”
O’Reilly added that “for [Mon], so much of the first season, she had to hide…and of course, in order for her…to get to where we get to in Rogue One, there are much bigger risks that have to be taken. She has to step out of the shadows.”
5. Just how did Melshi get to Narkina 5? Duncan Pow and Tony Gilroy have their own theories.
Fans of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story were excited to reunite with Ruescott Melshi (Duncan Pow) in episode eight, when Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is taken to the Imperial factory and prison on Narkina 5. But some fans are still eager to know: just how did Melshi become a prisoner in the first place?
Joining the live stream, Pow’s take was that Melshi was simply not a rule follower. “He doesn’t like being told what to do,” the actor said. “And he’s not a great believer…in this idea of the Empire.” Although he didn’t get into the specifics, Pow imagined that Melshi simply refused to accept what someone told him or asked him to do. Gilroy was even more playfully elusive, explaining that “he was convicted of skepticism.”
6. Even Gilroy was stunned by the way Rogue One served as a surprise inspiration for one scene.
For the parting between Cassian and Melshi in episode 11, director Benjamin Caron and cinematographer Damián García envisioned a scene that surprised the series creator. The beachside moment at sunset acted as a visual callback (or call-forward) to the ending of Rogue One at a similar locale on Scarif. “It wasn’t in the script that way,” said Gilroy. “Even the way they put the horizon line…. I remember watching dailies…. It’s what you dream about when you write something. Can it be this heartbreaking?”
Pow added that, although he and Luna were sporting beachside attire, the shoot on the English coast was dreadfully cold. “It was actually the first thing I shot on Andor,” he noted. “I said to Diego at some point, ‘Can you hear what I’m saying, because my lips feel like they don’t work.’ But it was great.” For Pow, Andor’s second season is a full circle moment that takes him back nearly a decade to his appearance in Rogue One.
Before Gilroy and Crossan signed off, actor Diego Luna made a surprise appearance in a video greeting with yet another teaser for things to come. “It was such a joy to return as Cassian after Rogue One for the first season of Andor. I’m incredibly grateful for your continued support of this year’s journey,” Luna said. “A lot of love went into making this series, and you have no idea what’s in store. I can’t wait for you to see what happens next in the last season of Andor.”
You can rewatch the full event for yourself now on YouTube and then tune in every Tuesday for new episodes of Andor Season 2, only on Disney+.
