‘Andor’: Ebon Moss-Bachrach Talks Joining ‘Star Wars’ and Working with Tony Gilroy
Andor actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach, of Girls and The Bear fame, recently spoke with The Playlist and discussed joining the Star Wars universe and more.
The fourth episode of Andor, which aired last week, introduced a bunch of different characters in both the Rebel and Imperial side of the rising conflict. Perhaps the most interesting group is the one collaborating with Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael on the planet Aldhani. Vel’s squad feels more fragmented than you would like right before a critical mission, and we’re sure some of the tension that started to brew after Cassian promptly joined the group will explode in this week’s episode.
Among those new faces was Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Arvel Skeen, who appears to be highly critical of the current situation, but is willing to push forward under Vel’s orders anyway. Unsurprisingly, Moss-Bachrach was kept in the dark about the story beyond scenes his character is involved in, something he commented on while explaining at length why he joined the show:
Yeah, man, me too. That’s all it was for me. It was fucking Tony Gilroy, right? I mean, that is the man right there. That’s even like way more than ‘Star Wars,’ I was there for that dude. I mean, you’ve seen it, so you know, we were trying to make something more real, more serious. I mean, you probably know way more than me cause I haven’t even seen the show or read the first three scripts. I think my character shows up in episode four?
I mean, let me try to put myself back there, dude. It was a while ago, and it was so crazy. It was so weird to– I mean, I was born in 1977. Those early “Star Wars” films are more complex, I think. And even though it’s been a while, and you know, I’d like to think I’ve graduated beyond all this; I’m more sophisticated, I’m a more cynical dude, but my first day on set, there are people pointing to the sky, “there’s a moon there and, there are three planets there. There’s our moon there.” And then I have like these lines to say, and, and I, “oh man, this is, this is a lot. This is kind of crazy.” And I have to talk about [laughs, parsecs and things like that and something triggers something in my childhood, you know? It was a surprisingly profound and scary little moment there. I got a little like choked up. But I don’t know what else I can say about our “Star Wars.”
When asked about the series’ huge emotional stakes and how the Empire-Rebel conflict is being approached in a different way, he said the following:
Yeah, totally. It’s about the politicization of like a nihilist kind of like, right? Cassian, that is. But it’s so compartmentalized I don’t really know so much beyond my stuff, which was just very straightforward. We’re a group of radicals trying to like free their little corner of the universe. Take some money from the Empire, free this little goat and sheep planet and blow some stuff up. But there’s like a direct connection between this and— what kind of turns me on about the thing is this—chronologically, it’s one of the more “Star Wars,” because this takes us to ‘Rogue One,’ which takes us to ‘A New Hope,’ I think, is that kind of how works, yeah. So I kind of got into that feeling like I’m a founding father or something, you know? [laughs] Of this mythology.
He also shed some light on how Tony Gilroy went all in on the show, taking on a lot of work to make everything click and feel like Star Wars despite his unique angle:
And I have to just say; I’m just kind of in awe of Tony. There was no writer’s room; there was Tony Gilroy, going into his office and spending hours in there and coming up with like planets and different kinds of spaceships and names, crazy names for all sorts of weird, different aliens that he would make up. I’m just so tickled by thinking about Tony’s process of world-building going on in his like 8×10 office or hotel room somewhere, with pen to paper, planets being formed in distant galaxies; I think that’s just so awesome.
These are just the meatiest bits of a very interesting interview with one of the show’s many supporting actors. Hopefully, we’ll learn more from other newcomers as Andor marches forward. As always, come back on Wednesday for our written review of episode 5 and The Resistance Broadcast’s live discussion.
Francisco J. Ruiz is that guy who has watched Jurassic Park a thousand times and loves Star Wars. His hunger for movies is only matched by his love for video games. He graduated in English Studies from the University of Malaga, in Spain. As he keeps writing about what he enjoys (and doesn’t) for websites all over, he’s continuing his studies.
