Denise Gough on How the Writing Enhances Every Character in ‘Andor’
Actress Denise Gough spoke to IndieWire recently to discuss her character in Andor, ISB Supervisor Dedra Meero, and the actress couldn’t resist praising the writing on the show. Besides sharing her reaction to learning about her character’s developments, both in seasons 1 and 2, she also pulled back the curtain and told some behind-the-scenes stories to illustrate the way showrunner Tony Gilroy likes to work with the cast.
Similar to Gilroy, Gough came into Andor without a deep love for Star Wars. The offer surprised her when it came, but what was even more surprising to her was the fact that Gilroy had spotted her years ago in a theater play and immediately thought of her for the role. She said:
“He saw Dedra then. He’s the one that saw each of us and saw ‘She’s perfect for that person.’ What does it say about me that he thought I was perfect for Dedra? I mean, poor Kyle [Soller] — what does it say about Kyle that he’s perfect for Syril?”
According to the actress, this is how Gilroy pitched the character to her:
“He used the word badass, but also the word fascist. He was like, ‘She works harder than everybody else,’ and we did talk about the idea […] that she’s surrounded, in a very male-dominated place. It felt to me that I was going to play a woman that really had to prove herself, but what’s exciting about that is she’s the underdog. We’re kind of drawn as an audience to support the underdog, aren’t we?”
Her interpretation of the character went a bit beyond that, as she explained. It reminded her of a famous scene from the premiere episode of Breaking Bad season 4:
“I just always think that scene with Gus Fring before he murders that guy, when he takes his shirt off first and hangs it up. That’s very Dedra.”
In fact, she got very much into character to perform the scene in episode 9 where she tortures Adria Arjona’s Bix:
“I was so excited to do that. I always like to offer up a first take without direction initially, just my gut instinct. […] I was furious that they didn’t clap at the end of it. I was like, ‘This is theater! You’re watching theater!’”
She also gets vibes from The Handmaid’s Tale‘s Serena Joy, though we may have to wait for season 2 to see what she means by that:
“There’s a scene in the new season where she kind of turns on her feminine thing. I was thinking ‘Oh my god she and Dedra are totally cut from the same cloth,’ but what Serena is able to do is go into sensuality, and Dedra just can’t do that. She starts to short circuit.”
She then expanded on that, teasing what the end of her character arc in the second season of Andor might be:
“The payoff is just so juicy. She’s not just gonna fall in love and become good. [Gilroy] laughed at me when I asked that. He just doesn’t do stuff like that, Tony. [The writers] don’t make women like that. Every character is more interesting than it would be with lesser writers.”
This may be reminiscent of the final scene of Dedra in the season 1 finale, where she and Syril Karn seemed to be having a romantic moment after the latter rescued the former. That was very much not the case, though Gough had discussed her trepidation about it with the crew:
“I’m never really nervous of the work, but I was just like ‘What if Dedra’s getting rescued? What if I build this woman and she gets rescued by a guy?’ Myself, Kyle, and Ben talked about what that would look like, and it became so much more interesting.
At that point, you’re just human. You’re not Dedra from the ISB. We didn’t actually have to think of it as a rescue, we just let the emotion of that moment happen… I didn’t expect it to have such an impact, but it’s so short because you don’t want to see too much of that Dedra. We’ve kept her so icy cold and you have just moments of ‘What’s under that? What would happen if she lost it?’ So I don’t know where — well I do know where it’s gonna go, but I’m not going to tell you.”
Finally, she shared a moment that she had with Gilroy recently, when he was walking her through the season 2 arc, which really sheds some light on the behind-the-scenes dynamics of the crew:
“I said to Tony the other day — he was talking me through Season 2, and he was talking about a certain scene and I said, ‘Look, whatever.’ He said ‘No, not whatever!’ And I said ‘I’m not saying that that I don’t care. I’m just saying that whatever you give me, Tony, I know it’s the right thing.’ There’s so little to battle with. We’ve gotten really lucky. It doesn’t always happen like this, and he’s the one that’s made it all happen.”
The next season of Andor is currently filming in the U.K. and will be released on Disney Plus in the second half of 2024. The entire gang is returning, including the cast and writers, with the addition of Tom Bissell. A new trio of directors will be taking over. According to Gilroy himself, they will also be dealing with “legacy characters”, though we don’t know which ones yet.
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.
