‘Andor' creator crafted the most ambitious ‘Star Wars' series yet with final season

San Francisco Chronicle​

21-04-2025

'Andor,' which premiered on Disney+ in 2022, is widely considered the smartest, most mature and best 'Star Wars' spinoff series. Now Season 2 completes the journey of Cassian Andor, portrayed by Diego Luna, from interstellar criminal to the passionate rebel martyr who meets his fate in 'Rogue One' (2016), a close prequel to George Lucas' original film trilogy.
If anything, the 12 new chapters have even more character development, complex political intrigue and new worlds to understand. Credit that to showrunner Tony Gilroy, the acclaimed screenwriter of the 'Bourne' movies (2002-12) and writer-director of 'Michael Clayton' (2007), a multi-Oscar-nominated look at ruthless corporate chicanery that foreshadows some of the Galactic Empire's predations in the series he created.
History buff Gilroy, who worked ideas into the show referencing everything from the Holocaust-planning Wannsee Conference to the Gulf of Tonkin false flag incident that got America mired in the Vietnam War, spoke with the Chronicle via video from Los Angeles a week before the final 'Andor' season's debut on Disney+ on Tuesday, April 22.
Q: Your work has always been sophisticated and complex. How do you mesh that with a franchise known for lightsaber duels and Baby Yodas?
A: I'm doing the same thing I've always done, trying to bring my game wherever I go. I'm trying to be real, trying to be truthful; starting small, not thinking about agendas.
You don't embark on something this huge without a lot of foreplay beforehand. OK, you're buying into a show that's going to track five years of someone who starts off about as disinterested and apolitical as he could be, and turning him into 'Rogue One's' revolutionary war hero. So you're testing each other and showing things.
Once we laid down the grammar and the tone of it and the places we could go, Disney kind of let me go free range. They really sat back and watched, and gambled on us all the way through. It's quite extraordinary.
Q: So how do you balance intricate trade wars, clashing rebel agendas and the like with spaceship chases and other action staples?
A: Job one is not to bore you. Job one is to make you wonder what happens next. It's an adventure story. I am positively pathological about not losing your interest.
So I start there, and I try to temper that with everything else that I do.
I like a lot of characters. Look, they gave me the opportunity to go from being a short-story writer, which is essentially what screenwriting feels like to me now, to being a novelist. So I wrote an epic novel about revolution and insurrection over a five-year period, and authoritarianism and oppression and the destruction of community. These are things that I've been studying my whole life as an amateur, never anticipating I'd ever have an opportunity to use any of that.
Q: Some of it seems unnervingly familiar. Anything in the show that inadvertently or intentionally speaks to the politics of 2025 America?
A: Certainly not intentionally. I mean, without the strike, the show would have come out a year ago, and we built it up five, six years ago.
I make historical comps all the way through the series. So I'm not writing with a newspaper, and I'm not psychic.
I do not know how the show will be received. I will be as interested as anybody else — probably more interested than anybody else — in how it lands. But it's not something that was engineered, that's for sure.
Q: Describe your concept of Cassian and what he represents.
A: He's just the perfect warrior, spy, revolutionary. My pitch was, put him in the biggest hole you possibly can and let's watch an almost messianic character come into focus over a five-year period through the most difficult gauntlet we can construct for him, surrounded by the biggest chorus of peripheral and essential characters that will fill in the rest of the story.
Q: What does Diego Luna bring to the role?
A: I worked on 'Rogue' and I knew Diego from that. You can make movies with people you don't like and get through it, but you could never make a show like this. We've been together for a long time. It takes an extraordinary person, an extraordinary actor and really an extraordinary collaborator to do that. Diego Luna is all those things.
Q: 'Andor' not only plays more realistically but looks more — I guess the word is persuasive — than other franchise entries.
A: One of the first hires that we made was Luke Hull, the production designer who had done (HBO's 2019 miniseries) 'Chernobyl.' From day one, he was my primary collaborator. When you think about it, every single thing we do in the show has to be designed. I hadn't realized that when blithely, ignorantly getting involved in the show. Luke is my constant conversation.
We built worlds, we built these societies, these economies, these aesthetics, these languages. He has fired up abilities and ambitions in my work that I never thought were possible, and then delivered on them.
Q: I had to Google 'Valencia City of Arts and Sciences' to confirm that your Coruscant Senate building is an actual, futuristic structure in Spain.
A: We went down to Valencia and looked at that (architect Santiago) Calatrava building and it was like, 'Oh, my God, we can do everything here. All kinds of things for the Senate, we can put 25 other things in here.'
We like shooting in the world and extending our set. That's our approach: We find a place that works for us and put the actors there, then extend it later on. It's definitely old-school, it's a fading practice. But there's wind, there's air, there's sun, there's weather, there's the traditional tempos of filmmaking.
Q: You often work with your brothers; Dan ('Nightcrawler') wrote three episodes for the new season and John edits all your projects. What's the appeal?
A: I trust them. I mean, we've been working together forever. My brother John is listed as an editor, but he's a producer on the show. He's made so many directors look good for so long. He's cut everything Danny and I have ever made as writer-directors.
We're very lucky. We really get along and respect each other, and we know how to resolve our problems.