After the terrifying Ghorman Massacre that unleashed the full might of the Empire’s KX droids, K-2SO, the fan-favorite reprogrammed Imperial droid, made his proper return to the screen in Andor Season 2, episode 9.
It has been a full decade since actor Alan Tudyk first said hello to the character during the filming of Rogue One. And over the years, Tudyk has had many opportunities to see how much the character means to fans.
“The neat stories that I always just love to hear are the ones between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons,” he says. “K-2 and Rogue One are things that families connect over. Although for kids, ‘I'm like, God, wow, kids are growing up fast because everyone dies.’ For me, it would've been traumatizing, but I was a kid from the seventies.”
Tudyk recently sat down with StarWars.com during a visit to the Lucasfilm headquarters to reflect on the enduring appeal of the wise-cracking droid who, in Tudyk’s mind at least, thinks of Cassian like a father.
The Childishness of an Imperial Droid
“I think a lot of K-2 is me,” Tudyk says. “I’m somewhat childish even at 54 years old, and I always saw K-2 as a child.
“You know how children are always doing and saying things that they shouldn't? Online, you may see videos where a little kid will so sweetly say, ‘Mom, your mustache is so much prettier than dad's’” he says with a laugh. “That's the kind of childlike quality that K-2 has."
There’s a scene early in Rogue One where the rebel council decides Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) will travel with Tudyk's K-2 to the next objective on the planet Jedha. K2 looks directly at Jyn and delivers the line, "That is a bad idea. I think so and so does Cassian."
In Tudyk’s head, he recalls the line being: “‘No one likes you. They all talk about you when you are not in the room. And then when you come into the room, they stop. And then when you leave, they start talking again,'” he laughs. “I had actually convinced myself in my head that was what was in the movie until I watched it again before I did Andor.”
The year, according to Tudyk
Andor Season 2’s structure has year-long in-story gaps between every set of three episodes. That means that most of K-2’s life as a reprogrammed droid occurs between his proper introduction in episode 9, and his re-appearance in the final arc. Tudyk has his own head canon for how he likes to picture that year of K-2 and Cassian’s life.
“I always saw K-2 as having a learning period from when he was reprogrammed,” he says. “I think it was a lot of slow trust that had to be built a little bit.”
Much of K-2’s screen time in Andor is shared with Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and fellow rebel Melshi (Duncan Pow). But, if for some reason the trio were in a trust fall situation, K-2 would catch Cassian, but he would not catch Melshi, Tudyk quips. “He just wouldn't,” he says. “Not because he doesn't like him. He would just think it was amusing.”
Making the machine
Back at the start of his time performing the voice and motion capture for K-2SO, Tudyk auditioned a few voice options, including an American accent and a more Cockney one. But a lot of the best parts of K-2 come in through the physicality of the character.
Often seen walking on stilts in behind-the-scenes images, Tudyk used his whole body to express Kay’s emotions, in part because there was no way to translate his emotive face onto the droid’s fixed features. “For K-2SO, I was thinking mostly about it as a full-body performance. If there's an emotion or an action within the scene, I have to allow my body to also tell the story,” Tudyk says. “Just a little tilt to the head goes a long way. He's so big and imposing that I learned just little human movements that don't have real significance make him a lot more relatable.”
Figures as much
But if Tudyk has one regret, it may be turning down an offer to get a lifesize 1:1 replica of his character for his home. “I went to Sideshow [Collectibles]. They had made a K-2SO! They showed it to me, and I took a picture with it. They were like, ‘We'd like to give you number one (the first K-2 model they created) to take home.”
While he appreciated the offer, Tudyk says he rarely keeps mementos from his work around the house. “[And it was] the size of K-2SO — seven feet, two inches tall,” Tudyk says. “And I said, ‘No. I can't have this in my home.’ This is a role I played, but I don't need it to be in my home as a way of saying, ‘Hey everybody, look, I'm K-2SO!’ It's just too large.”
Tudyk was reminded of the moment when he encountered the same statue in the Lucasfilm lobby. “Now, I would say, ‘Yes, yes. Give that to me! I would love to have K-2SO around.’” Although he does have a few smaller K-2 action figures subtly sprinkled on bookshelves around the house.
After nearly a decade with the character, Tudyk is proud of his contributions to the Star Wars galaxy, including an infamous ad-lib in Rogue One that left Diego Luna laughing after his character was slapped.
Even on his final day of filming on Andor, Tudyk was ready to help filmmakers get into the mind of his reprogrammed counterpart. In the final scene Tudyk shot on set, K-2 was set to walk across a bridge at a glowering ISB officer, rattling off his former designation by way of introduction.
But something about the line didn’t feel right for Tudyk, and the penultimate episode features Tudyk’s preferred take. “It was me walking across the bridge and hitting that guy and just saying, ‘No,’” he says.
It’s fitting that Tudyk’s final scene as the character demonstrated both K-2’s humor and immense strength. For now, like Tudyk, we are left to imagine all sorts of adventures that may have happened off-screen as K-2SO and Cassian became the team that would start an all-out war with the Empire.
