Andor Showrunner Talks Season 1 Writing, Production, and Lessons Learned; Teases Legacy Characters in Season 2

SWNN Probe · Nov 12, 2022

Hard as it is to believe, we're nearing the end of Andor's first season. In just over a week, we'll be halfway through the story of how Cassian Andor became the dedicated Rebel spy we first met in Rogue One. Over the last couple of months, showrunner Tony Gilroy, who also worked on many of the rewrites and reshoots of the 2016 film, has spoken more about how the series changed throughout its development.

Now, in a comprehensive interview with Collider, Gilroy has discussed the making of the show's first season and how he feels its lengthy development improved the final product. He also talked about what viewers can expect to see in the show's second and final season. From the look of things, the series' second half will feature more tie-ins with pre-existing Star Wars canon as well as more legacy characters from other projects.

The interviewer began the conversation by jokingly asking Gilroy what it would take to convince him to do more Star Wars projects after he finishes Andor. It would seem that Gilroy is so focused on making the second season as good as the first that he hasn't given any thought to the future:

It's another two years from now before I'll be done. It’s just such a supreme drag to hear people who are in the movie business and being well paid and doing what everybody wants to do… But it's a Maclunkey lot of work, man. It just never ends. Every day, it just doesn't stop. Literally, working on two dairy farms, everybody has to be milked every day. It doesn't stop. It's just simply too much to consider anything else. I can't imagine what I'll do other than curl up in a fetal position when this is over, man.

I want to live through it. We want to maintain the standard. We want to stay as obsessed. We don't want to take our foot off the gas, and we want to do something better and even more. We want to go farther if we can. I can't possibly imagine what I would do after this. I really can't. It's too hard.
Click to expand...

Jimmy Smits as Bail Organa in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Gilroy then spoke about how he hopes Andor will inspire future creatives to reconsider the kinds of stories that can be told within the Star Wars universe. The interviewer asked Gilroy what lessons he learned while working on the first season that he'll carry into the production of the second.

The showrunner stressed the importance of having completed scripts ready, and said that many of the same crew behind the first season would return. It's here where Gilroy drops potential hints for the future as he mentions that he'll have to schedule lots of actors to film for season 2:

What's harder? What do you learn? We have to make everything. We have to design everything. So we're much more conscious. And I think it gets a little spooky sometimes where you realize you have to design absolutely everything you're going to do, and that's daunting and there's no shortcut to that. And there's no shortcut to getting stage space. Sometimes we're just really limited. “My God, there's no more stages. I'd like to do that, but we can't do that because I can't get another stage. There's no more stages available. We can't do that because...” Also, it's a lot more difficult to book the actors now because everybody's much more complicated. We're getting into legacy characters now as well. It's very complicated to get everybody to book out and book everybody's schedules. Everybody's very busy. Nobody knew that we were going to have this many characters when we started - my fault.

So juggling all of that is, you can imagine what the air traffic control on scheduling is here. It's pretty complicated. So a lot of that stuff is really daunting and new, and that's a new terror that I didn't feel the first time around. But the things you learn, get it on the page. Someone said to me the other day, 'Who's your writer on set?' I go, 'We don't have a writer on set. We never have a writer on set. We never have a writer on set, but the director's on set and the script is there. Everybody knows what they're doing. By the time we show up, we know what we're doing.
Click to expand...

(Center, L-R): Kino Loy (Andy Serkis) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) in Lucasfilm's ANDOR, exclusively on Disney+. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Viewers who pay close attention to the show's credits know that Tony Gilroy's brothers, Dan and John, work on the series as well. Dan Gilroy serves as one of its writers, and John Gilroy returns to the franchise as an editor after working in the same capacity on Rogue One. Collider was sure to ask Tony Gilroy how he convinced his brothers to join him on his second Star Wars project:

No, I mean, look, it's a different commitment. Danny, comes to the writer's room for five days and writes his scripts, and then goes off and talks to me on the phone. John Gilroy is needing to go to London on Sunday, and he'll be there for two years. He's my hostage there. He's there every minute. So for Johnny, it's a five-year commitment like me. But he has to live there the whole time. And for Danny, he can cavalierly go on and do whatever he wants to do. So it's a little different.
Click to expand...

Gilroy also confirmed, as previously reported, that all the writers from the first season, including his brother Dan, will return for the second, with the addition of new scribe Tom Bissell:

Yeah. Danny came out. We had Danny and Beau, and then we added a guy named Tom Bissell. Tom Bissell is really cool and really, really interesting, versatile, really good writer. But also a very, very, very big Star Wars fan, which we really wanted to make sure we had another pro because we're going into Rogue, and we're going to Yavin, and then we're going into places where we eventually need to really weave our way back to the source. So Tom came in, and he's been great. So he's got some episodes too.
Click to expand...

(L-R): Tay Kolma (Ben Miles), Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) and Davo Sculdun (Richard Dillane) in Lucasfilm's ANDOR, exclusively on Disney+. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

One of Andor's most acclaimed qualities is how the series has efficiently juggled several ongoing plot threads while showing lots of old and new characters and locations. Some characters and planets have consistently appeared since the series' early episodes while others are only featured for a single arc. Collider asked Gilroy if he was ever hesitant about choosing this ambitious narrative structure for the series:

Oh, man, I wasn't the only one. I had a whole bunch of people staring at me going like, 'What the Blast am I doing?' No, I mean, I don't know where the moment... I mean, look honest to God because it's just been going on. First there was the whole lead-up to it, and then I went there to prep all winter, and I had some of the scripts together, and we'd had the room, and we knew the shape of the show, but the other scripts weren't perfect, but those guys were gone. And then I was going to direct, and then COVID hit. And quite honestly, COVID really saved the show because that stall really gave everybody a chance to reset and go, 'Oh my God, can we do this?” And it gave a chance to re-tailor the scripts for everything that we were going to do. It also pulled me away from being a director so I could do the other work of making the show.
Click to expand...

One of the series' more interesting story decisions is how it takes the viewer all the way back to Cassian's childhood and shows how he has struggled to survive since his earliest days. When asked why Andor had to portray this chapter of the title character's life, Gilroy had this to say:

I mean, again, this goes to my very same thing with the building of the prison, and whatever. My first thing is, 'Oh, I would really like to explain his accent.' I mean, let's just deal with that. If he's going be from Ferrix, or he is going to be from anywhere, why does he have this accent?

Well, I want to deal with that. So sketch that out for a couple of hours, and that leads to one thing then leads to the next. And I wanted to enhance the source of his rage. I wanted to enhance the sense of his exile. I wanted to enhance his fundamental, almost pre-memory hatred of authority and the institutions that had destroyed his home world. It comes from that. But in the very first moment in front of this is: I’ve got to explain his accent. What should I do about that?
Click to expand...

Film and television production inevitably present their own sets of challenges, especially when it comes to massive projects like Andor. However, Gilroy tried to make the most of the series' limitations and to use them to improve the scripts:

Yes, we've had some budgetary things along the way. When we had COVID restrictions, at one point, I think the original conception for Aldhani was going to be a couple of thousand people showed up there, I think they were going to do that in the beginning. And then, when we couldn't do that because of COVID, it actually got more interesting.

A lot of times - I don't want to say “all the time” because then everybody will just put you in a box all the time - but most of the time, the solves to problems end up being better. Limitations are good. The problem that you solve pushes you deeper in it. And so to make the Aldhani culture be so diminished, and so on its last legs, and so, at-the-end-of-the-road, really made it better in a weird way. But there's other things along the way. There's things we can't afford to do. I'm in the middle of changing something right now that was completely written and built out that we can't afford to do...I think the solve is an improvement in a way. I do.
Click to expand...

While Andor may have had a long and tumultuous development process, the end result has clearly resonated with fans and reviewers alike. The series endured creative shake-ups and the difficulties of filming during a pandemic to become one of the most acclaimed Star Wars projects of the last several years. With Tony Gilroy and his writing and production team all returning for season 2, the series has a solid chance of ending on as strong of a note as it began.

You can head to Collider for the full interview.

Click HERE to check out and comment on this topic on our main site

DeeRush · Nov 12, 2022

I hoped that Tony Gilroy had learned to write a tighter script for a serialized drama, because I believe Season One had too many episodes for its narrative.

MBWilson · Nov 12, 2022

Yeah, maybe someday he'll learn how to do his job...

Andor Showrunner Talks Season 1 Writing, Production, and Lessons Learned; Teases Legacy Characters in Season 2

SWNN Probe Seeker

DeeRush Rebelscum

MBWilson Force Sensitive

Andor Showrunner Tony Gilroy Describes the Collaborative Effort Required to Create the Critically Acclaimed Season Finale

Andor Showrunner Says Series Is About 'Ordinary People', Talks Collaborating With Lucasfilm Story Group

Star Wars: Andor Will Change How Fans See Rogue One, Teases Showrunner Tony Gilroy

Diego Luna Talks Making Andors Aldhani Arc in New Behind The Scenes Clip

Tony Gilroy Calls Andor The Most 'Important' Thing He Has Ever Done

Share This Page

Like us on Facebook

Useful Searches

Andor Showrunner Talks Season 1 Writing, Production, and Lessons Learned; Teases Legacy Characters in Season 2

SWNN Probe Seeker

DeeRush Rebelscum

MBWilson Force Sensitive

Andor Showrunner Tony Gilroy Describes the Collaborative Effort Required to Create the Critically Acclaimed Season Finale

Andor Showrunner Says Series Is About 'Ordinary People', Talks Collaborating With Lucasfilm Story Group

Star Wars: Andor Will Change How Fans See Rogue One, Teases Showrunner Tony Gilroy

Diego Luna Talks Making Andors Aldhani Arc in New Behind The Scenes Clip

Tony Gilroy Calls Andor The Most 'Important' Thing He Has Ever Done

Share This Page

Useful Searches