Tony Gilroy on Balancing Creative Independence and ‘Star Wars’ Canon, Uncertainty on ‘Andor’ Ratings, and More
Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy recently participated in a roundtable by The Hollywood Reporter as part of the ongoing FYC Emmys campaign, where he shared some of his thinking process when approaching such a massive IP like Star Wars. In it, Gilroy talked a lot about managing expectations, his thoughts on streaming metrics (or the lack thereof), and a lot more. For additional context, the roundtable happened a month and a half ago, before the strike was announced and Gilroy stopped working on season 2 of Andor.
When asked about the creative choice that scared their crews the most, Gilroy brought up the fact that in every new draft, the writers kept adding more and more characters. (According to interviews he did last year, season 1 had 195 speaking parts.) But before responding with that, Gilroy had some interesting comments about how he viewed his contribution to the franchise — he thinks of his crew as disruptors:
“I have a variety of audiences that were here before I was. They have subcultures within their own subcultures. But if you look at Star Wars as the Catholic Church, our mandate was to take the Latin Mass out completely. Turn it upside down. But every single thing that we do is canonical, and it has a whole bunch of filters of analysis that are unlike anything else I’ve ever worked on.”
He then added how he felt the pressure of what he was cooking up not because of the fanbase, but because of the enormity of the project he ended up creating. A recent story by The Hollywood Reporter placed Andor‘s budget around $250M; we assume that accounts for season 1 alone, but the wording is unclear on that front. However, as Gilroy explained, that didn’t force his hand to start changing the way he worked, and that involves creative freedom:
“The multiples of expense and the amount of people working means the pressure is enormous. But it was going to represent a really large part of my life. So I wasn’t going to change my game. Everybody kind of knows what I do and what I want to do and that I like a great deal of independence. But I like to deliver for people. There was a pretty healthy understanding that if we were going to go the way that I said we wanted to go, we were going to be pretty disruptive about what we were doing. I didn’t have to worry after that.”
Gilroy was also asked about his relationship with the Star Wars fanbase, which can be particularly challenging for filmmakers, as we’ve seen in the past few years. Although the showrunner doesn’t pretend to be a huge fanatic of everything included in the galaxy far, far away, he does point out that he’s very familiar with the five-year period he’s working in:
“We just went and did the Star Wars Celebration in London two weeks ago, and it’s really a pleasure to say to them, with all honesty, that they’re investors in our show. It’s their mad passion that forms the basic motor that gave Disney the economic guts to gamble on something as bizarrely different as what we did. So I pay attention to it. I know a great deal about a five-year period in Star Wars canonical history. And I won’t embarrass myself and describe how little I know about the rest of it. It would be criminal if I didn’t have great affection for the environment that I’m playing in for five years. It would be a crime against nature to take five years of your creative life and not really believe in the thing you’re doing.”
This quote will definitely be something to remember a year and a half from now, once season 2 comes out. The narrative of the series is about to enter a critical point as it will conflict with some events that have been set up somewhere else in canon, namely Cassian and K-2SO’s first encounter (told through a 2017 one-issue comic). Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he does not have a personal attachment to the franchise, and his knowledge of the existing lore is quite limited, Gilroy has been a passionate follower of the canon and has consulted frequently with Pablo Hidalgo and the story group, perhaps more than any other filmmaker working for Lucasfilm.
Last but not least, the topic of the strike was brought up. Since it wasn’t known at the time that there would be an industry-wide work stoppage for writers, the moderator asked the panelists about the issue that will not, whatever the outcome, be settled with this strike and that they cannot stand. Gilroy then addressed the issue of not being able to bet on himself and take less money upfront that he can then get back if the show performs well because Disney Plus won’t reveal their metrics. This is something deeply concerning for him, as he eloquently explained:
“I find it incredibly ironic that at the moment where every single conceivable use of your material is being analyzed, parsed, interpreted, twisted and molded together, that’s the moment where we’ve finally arrived at the company saying, ‘We’re never going to give you any ownership anymore. This is all going to be about buyouts.’ I had to negotiate a deal to come back with the second season, and I [couldn’t] do something that I’ve been able to do for 35 years in my career — which is be able to walk into a casino and say, ‘Hey, I want to bet on myself. I’ll take less. Give me a piece.’ I want a metric that shows me if I win, I win.
And we’re all being forced into that position because of this crippled new system that I don’t think the companies are entirely happy with, either. This is a universal problem. I can never accurately be paid for what I’m doing right now. Either it’s a huge loss for Disney and I rip them off, or I’m being fucking screwed upside down. I’m afraid that’ll be memorialized if it goes another three years without being addressed. That’s my fear.”
Tony Gilroy is officially not working on Andor in any capacity at the moment in solidarity with the writers’ strike. Season 2 of the Diego Luna-led show is currently in production in the UK and is expected to wrap this August, aiming for a release date one year later.
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.
