Tony Gilroy Explains How ‘Andor’ Went From Five Seasons to Two
Shortly after we released an article connecting the dots on how Andor was put together at Lucasfilm, showrunner Tony Gilroy has filled in the details, confirming some of the stuff we knew and building upon some of the unclear details. In a new feature by Variety, the writer/director explained how he worked closely with Lucasfilm to get Andor off the ground. Gilroy, of course, is credited as co-writer on Rogue One, and essentially acted as the director during the movie’s extensive reshoots in 2016, which course-corrected much of the third act.
Apparently, on the heels of the critical and financial success of that movie, Kennedy was eager to work with Gilroy again on another Star Wars project, as the showrunner explained:
“I remember Kathy saying, ‘What can we do?’ And I said, ‘Well, what kind of stories do you want to do?’. And she goes, ‘We could do anything.’ So I said, ‘Could you do, like, Inherit the Wind?’”
He was referring to a 1960 film by Stanley Kramer that adapted the 1955 play of the same name, a legal drama that was highly critical of creationism and commented on intellectual discourse. It was clear from the beginning that Gilroy was more interested in telling human stories than fairy tales about space wizards. Those conversations were lost in the wind, as in 2018, Lucasfilm started developing a live-action series for Disney Plus featuring Cassian Andor and K-2SO, but without Tony Gilroy. In fact, reports from that time indicate that The Americans showrunner Stephen Schiff had been brought on board as captain of the ship.
While Gilroy wasn’t approached to work on it, Kennedy did send him a script. Gilroy, who describes that initial approach as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Star Wars, got back to them with a “long forensic manifesto” on why the script wasn’t working and what the show should be. Looking back, Gilroy now describes it as “a radical idea.” According to The Playlist, Gilroy concluded that email by saying something in the vein of “but I’m not sure you want to make that show.” That show was Andor.
Details are a bit fuzzy at this point, but we know Diego Luna got the call from Tony Gilroy explaining the outline at some point in mid-2019, as the actor told Vanity Fair earlier this year, and he was instantly on board. (Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO at the time, had confirmed in late 2018 that Luna would be back in the role, when Schiff was still attached.) The series was reworked from the ground up, and it was originally going to run for five seasons, each one covering one year of Cassian’s life, leading to his introduction in Rogue One. However, after being in production of season 1 for two years, Gilroy realized that he couldn’t possibly do that four more times. He said:
“You just couldn’t possibly physically make five years of the show. I mean, Diego would be, like, 65. I’d be in a nursing home. We were panicked. We can’t sign on to this forever.”
His solution was simple but elegant. Instead of making four more seasons, Gilroy decided to crunch the outline for each season into a three-episode arc and make another twelve episodes that are essentially season 2. He borrowed the idea from the model they had already used for season 1, where each block of three episodes constitutes a singular story arc. Star Wars: The Clone Wars fans should already be used to this. He explained it to The Playlist as follows:
“Yeah, yeah, we—it was about last spring. We were in Scotland, [producer] Sanne [Wohlenberg], Diego. And we were like, ‘Oh my God, how do we get outta here? How are we gonna get out? What’s our exit strategy?’ But then we realized, ‘Oh my God, we have four years, and we have four blocks, and I went home, and I came back and [came up with], “You know what, why don’t we jump a year?” And what’s really cool, when we come back for part two, we’re going to jump a year, and we’re going to come back. It’s a year later, and all this shit’s happened, but we’re going to come back for a Friday, Saturday, and a Sunday, and then we’re going to jump a year. Then we’re going to do like five, six, seven days and jump a year, and then we’re going to do two weeks and jump a year. And the final block that we come back to is going to be the last five days before Rogue One.”
The result is a set of 1500 pages that cover both seasons of the show, with the final scene of season 2 leading us directly into Cassian’s introduction in Rogue One. And this is, literally, the case, as Tony Gilroy explained:
“Yeah, I mean, our final scene of the show is no secret; it’s going to be [Cassian] walking across the tarmac to get in the ship to go to the Rings of Kafrene to go meet, Daniel Mays’ [Tivik informant character that Cassian kills in ‘Rogue One,’ because he’s become a liability], he’s going there.”
When season 1 was being conceived, Gilroy (who is the Academy Award-nominated director of Michael Clayton) was planning to take on directing duties on multiple episodes, including the pilot, in addition to his writing up to seven episodes in the seasons. However, the pandemic got in the way and travel restrictions prevented Gilroy from being able to direct, something that facilitated Toby Haynes to assume a larger role in directing than initially anticipated. However, it seems like Gilroy doesn’t have any intention of directing on season 2, as he told The Playlist:
“[Season] two? I am not [directing]. I am not.
No, how I was even going to— I mean, COVID kind of saved the show because I was so ignorant and naive about how difficult and how huge and what it was going to be. I mean, I had no clue, and if I had directed, I mean, it would’ve been—I don’t know what would’ve happened with the show. The job I have to do now is so all-consuming and so much more than that. It’s just not a good use of my time to be on a set at all. And the directors that we get, they come, they’re energized, they’re ambitious. And so, I can take it all the way down and do the whole thing, but they come in with a new [hunger] that you really need.
They come in with a little extra thing. And it’s very exciting to wake up— because my days are out of New York. It’ll be five o’clock in the morning; wake up, turn on dailies, and go, ‘Wow, I wouldn’t have shot it that way. That’s wow. Look what they did.’ Right? So, no, I’m not directing. No, I can’t. I want to come back and direct something else later on, but I can’t do it now. The job’s too big. I can’t; I can’t afford it, the time.”
Season 2 will begin filming this November. So far, we know Diego Luna and Stellan Skarsgård are returning, and we assume Genevieve O’Reilly, but we have no confirmation about the rest of the cast. This, of course, works for the show’s benefit, as most of the characters are new with unknown fates. However, Gilroy did confirm to The Playlist that the team of writers that worked on the first season is returning:
“The first time, we did a six-day writer’s room; this time, we did an eight-day writer’s room. I mean, I come in, I bring a big, a huge, you know, a hundred-page pile of meat and put it on the table, and then [laughs] we beat it out.”
As Luna told Variety, there will be no possible continuation of the storylines presented in Andor. The show, and the story, will conclude with the twelfth episode of season 2:
“Star Wars is growing in ways that it can allow itself to have different expressions. We’re not part of a saga that doesn’t end. Our end is clear. It’s as clear as an end can be.”
Season 1 will start streaming on Disney Plus on September 21, with a three-episode premiere, covering the first arc of the season. We know that this will involve our introduction to a very different Cassian Andor, who is living with his adopted mother Maarva Andor on the planet Ferrix, where we will also meet Adria Arjona’s Bix Caleen. In Ferrix, we will also meet a series of factory workers as an Imperial unit, led by Supervisor Dedra Meero (played by Denise Gough), lands on the planet and starts messing with the established order.
Stay tuned for more Andor news as we enter the final weeks before its debut on September 21.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
