Tony Gilroy Calls ‘Andor’ The Most “Important” Thing He Has Ever Done
Over the weekend, Tony Gilroy was presented with the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement during the Writers Guild of America Awards, honoring his lifelong dedication to storytelling and the organization. During the press junket following the ceremony, Gilroy had a few words to say about Andor, the Star Wars series he’s currently in post-production on.
Here’s what Gilroy said in a video posted to social media by the WGA East account (via The Playlist):
“I’ve been on ‘Andor’ for five years now. We’re finishing the second half. I’ve had a lot of fun over the years, but I don’t know whether I’ve ever done anything as important as these 24 hours of storytelling we’re doing now. I don’t know if it’s just cause it’s a thing I’m on, but I don’t think so. I’ve never had a chance to work this big before.”
Gilroy is referring to Andor as a whole, meaning its 24-episode run of which we’ve seen half now. The second half, season 2, finished production earlier this year and should arrive on Disney Plus in 2025. It was severely affected by last year’s strikes, which not only kept Gilroy off the set for over two months but eventually also closed up the whole thing a few weeks before they were able to wrap. It was originally targeting an August 2024 release. Now, it’s undetermined.
Much has been said about the political messaging hidden in plain sight in Andor, and also its religious implications and much deeper themes. Gilroy himself is no stranger to activism, having actively participated in WGA rallies last year advocating for low-income writers’ rights based on his own experience as a decades-long member of the guild. He also had some words to say about that on Sunday:
“I was four years old and my father was a member of the guild. Pretty much every doctor’s visit I’ve ever had in my life has been covered by the Writers Guild. My safety net has been the Writers Guild growing up and then on my own. For the people in this house tonight it’s a fundamental cornerstone of their lives. It really is. It’s an organizing principle, it’s a safetey net, and it’s terribly important.”
The whole Andor endeavor has been a passion project for Gilroy since boarding the series back in 2019, when he was given pretty much free rein by Kathleen Kennedy to achieve his ambitious vision, which Kennedy had originally deemed too expensive for streaming. Gilroy assembled a writers’ room for season 1 and mapped out the rest of the series, which was originally planned as a five-season arc, with each set of 12 episodes covering each year leading up to Rogue One.
When they realized that it would take them 10+ years to be done with it (by which point Luna could play Cassian Andor’s dad and not the guy we met at the beginning of Rogue One), Gilroy trimmed down the story of the latter four seasons into a single 12-episode arc, which we’ll see next year. Each set of three episodes covers each of the aforementioned four years.
Andor was a critical darling back in 2022, and was nominated for eight Emmys, including Best Drama Series, Best Actor (Diego Luna), Best Directing (Benjamin Caron), Best Music (Nicholas Britell), and Best Writing, to Beau Willimon for writing episode 10, “One Way Out”. Willimon is not only returning for season 2 but he’s also been tapped to co-write James Mangold’s upcoming Star Wars movie, Dawn of the Jedi.
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.
