Happy Sad Confused - Tony Gilroy

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

How do you make the most celebrated STAR WARS story in decades without so much as a jedi in sight? You hire Tony Gilroy. The filmmaker behind MICHAEL CLAYTON and THE BOURNE LEGACY joins Josh to talk about his unlikely journey to ANDOR. Recorded at the 92nd Street Y. UPCOMING EVENTS 28 YEARS LATER Q&A with Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, & Danny Boyle 6/1 in NY -- ⁠⁠tickets here⁠⁠ Gary Oldman in LA 6/3 -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠tickets here⁠⁠⁠ Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes, video versions of the podcast, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and get enough points for a free donut, drink, or timbits. With 800 points after registration, activation, and first purchase of a dollar or more, see the Tim's app for details at participating in restaurants in Canada for a limited time. All these beings, how many of these beings in the five years that I get, how many of them have ever heard of the force?

Well, like nobody. How many have ever seen a lightsaber? Nobody. How many have heard of these four people you keep making the movies about? Nobody. So I was like, okay, well, that's a pretty wide field. And that's the Star Wars reality. Right.

You know? And so they, if you made a show about the United Kingdom and you only see. saw the crown. You'd be like, whoa, I don't know. That's enough, right? Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now. Hey, guys, it's Josh, and welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused.

This one's for the Star Wars fans, or just generally fans of great television and storytelling. Tony Gilroy is my guest on the pod today. It's a fantastic chat. if I do say so myself. All credit to Tony. Before we get to Mr. Gilroy, some news and announcements, updates. We saw two really cool events coming up on the calendar I wanted to mention really quickly for New York fans and L.A. fans, one for each of you. In New York, 28 years later, one of my most anticipated of the year, we are gathering together Danny Boyle, Aaron Taylor Johnson, and Jody Comer at the 92nd Streetwide for a big chat. Evening of June 1st.

clips from the film. This is an early sneak peek at one of the most anticipated films of the year for anybody with good taste, frankly. How great is 28 years later and how excited are we all for this sequel? I'm stoked for this one. Then Los Angeles, June 3rd, I've been touting it. I'm going to continue to tout it until it happens. I'm sorry, but I'm never going to apologize for having an event with Gary Oldman and being excited about it. I'm excited. Gary Oldman, the living legend. We're talking slow horses, but we're really also going to have a great career chat. True romance, Bram Stoker, Dracula, a thousand roles, Harry Potter, Batman. We're going to cover as much territory as possible.

He's one of the greats of all time, truly. June 3rd in Los Angeles at the Fine Arts Theater. Information on how to get your tickets is in the show notes. Our tier one tickets are sold out, but there are still plenty of seats left. It is a relatively small theater. It's going to be an intimate. fun special evening with one of the all-time greats, Gary Oldman. So get your tickets now. Spread the good word. Come on out and say hello. As always, all the announcements, the early

access, all the cool stuff is on our Patreon. Patreon.com slash happy, sad, confused. Supporting us over there. Let's us make more stuff over here. So check it out. See if something makes sense for you. And you have my eternal thanks. Okay. Today's episode. Andor Andor is one of the great shows I've seen in recent years. Full stop. Whether it's Star Wars or not,

whether you love Jedi or Skywalker's or whatever, this is just a great show. And it's no surprise because it comes from Tony Gilroy, who is one of the most consistently smart writers and filmmakers out there. He is, of course, known for his work on the Bourne movies.

Michael Clayton, this guy is a consummate storyteller and to see what he's brought to the Star Wars universe first through Rogue One, which he helped kind of triage and help out, and now with his baby Andor, which just concluded its second season. This is a conversation that we taped at 9 Second Streetwide just a day after the second season concluded. There's some spoilery stuff that we allude to here and there. So best to have seen the entire second season prior to.

watching or listening to this chat, I would recommend consuming it that way. But this is one of those great chats with like a really smart storyteller. So if you're a writer, an actor, a filmmaker, or just a fan, I think you're going to get a lot out of hearing Tony speak. He's just whip smart and really unusual. His vibe, you'll see very matter of fact, doesn't take it all to, I mean, takes it very seriously. It doesn't maybe take himself too serious.

and just, I really dug getting to know him, never had chatted with him before. So I think you guys are going to dig this one, whether you're a Star Wars fan or not. Please enjoy my conversation with the great Tony Gilroy. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here tonight, guys. Obviously, not a lot of New York Knicks fans in the house tonight. Thank you for prioritizing Star Wars over the Knicks. My name is Josh Horowitz.

This is a live taping of my podcast, Happy, Segg, Confused. and I'm so thrilled. Sometimes the timing just lines up. It's the right guy at the right moment. Just about a day ago, last night, the finale, the last three episodes of Andor premiered. And it is, I am not alone in saying it is some of the best television in recent years.

It is some of the best drama. It is some of the best Star Wars full stop ever, ever made. I'm confident in saying that. And the architect behind it is, of course, Of course, Tony Gilroy. You know him from his Academy Award-nominated work, Michael Clayton, his screenwriting work, Dolors Claiborne, Devils Advocate, The Born Movies. This guy knows how to do it, and it is all evidence on screen in Andor.

Let's celebrate him and the show tonight. Please give a warm welcome to Tony Gilroy, everybody. There is. There are people here. There are people here. Hello. Oh, my God. There are people here.

Of course they're here. You've made like the most celebrated show on television right now. Of course they're here, Tony. Okay. Okay. Don't act home. I'm getting with that idea. Are you more excited today about the reception to Andor or the fact that the Knicks are one game away from advances?

My logic tonight is that no matter what, there's another Nick game. Right. You know, if I go home and they won, then like, Wow, all right. So I'm good, I'm good no matter what. Let's go Andor all the way. All right. I'm going to celebrate Andor tonight. And there's a lot to celebrate. Look, you've gotten some great reviews throughout your career. And this one, this is next level. The way this is really united both fans of Star Wars, who are tough, and the folks that aren't necessarily Star Wars fans are appreciating this show. You've somehow hit that kind of nexus. Was that part of the goal of Andor from the start?

Well, we've been working really hard the last five, six weeks. We've been really junketing hard and like everyone's got a red dress on and we're out doing the Willie Lohman everywhere. Because the first audience we have, like the Star, if you're interested in Star Wars, you're probably really there already. Right. Like they were almost there before. The audience that we're really chasing is that Star Wars averse. You know, the Star Wars resistant to people who, you know, you know. You know, my friends, you know, who I run into on the street who were like, oh, wow, you know, Clayton was on or Bourne was on, man, what have you been doing?

You know, who you've been? You mean the last decade in my life? Yeah, like six years. I've been like, you know, oh, no, but that's Star Wars. And so that's the audience really chasing. I hope that's some people here. You know, that's really, we're really after it. And the show was built by people who, well, the show was designed for that.

It was designed, you didn't have to know anything about Star Wars at all to sit down and make a meal out of it. And it was built by people, half the people were nerds and the other half of the people were, had to be convinced to come on the show for the same reason. It is fascinating because, like, look, I'm sure a lot of people here did grow up on Star Wars. It's in our DNA. And I think there's like this preconceived notion that, like, what is Star Wars? And like, for, like, growing up, you're like, well, Star Wars.

Star Wars is the Skywalker's, Star Wars is the Force, and that's not this show, and yet it is Star Wars. I don't know, for you having come out the other side of this long journey, can you define what is Star Wars, what makes something fit under that umbrella? To think, I don't want to repeat myself, but if you think about it, the easiest way to think about it's like the Vatican. Like Lucasfilm is the Vatican, and there's like a curia and there's people that, you know, and there are, I don't even, I don't know all the levels, there's eight.

10 levels of canonical material, all the way down to like obscure fan fiction or whatever. And there's, you know, and there's a guy. There's Pablo Hidalgo, who's the guy, who's been there the librarian of this thing for a very long time. And one of the, and I knew him from Rogue. My experience on Rogue is very different than this. But when the, you know, I called Pablo and go, okay, like, fess up, the galaxy, all these beings, how many of these beings in the five years that I get. How many of them have ever heard of the force? Well, like nobody.

How many have ever seen a lightsaber? Nobody. How many have heard of these four people you keep making the movies about? Nobody. So I was like, OK, well, that's a pretty wide field. And that's the Star Wars reality. Right.

You know? And so they, if you made a show about the United Kingdom and you only saw the crown, sure. you'd be like, whoa, I don't know, that's enough, right? So that's, so that was, there's a really wide playing field. It's not what people think, so. It's fascinating, too, because you've kind of like Trojan horse your revolutionary novel into Star Wars, essentially.

Like this story has the bells and whistles of, yes, aliens and Star Wars accoutrements, but underneath it all are other passions that have been important to you. Needles to say, right? So I mean was there was there a non and or was there a non-star Wars take on these themes and stories that you were thinking of tackling? Is there a non-star Wars version of this story that you were going to tackle? I never, oh that's an interesting question. I never I never played with an idea that went at this stuff. You know I've been yeah history and revolutions and Oliver Cromwell and the

French Revolution and you know the show trials and I mean I can go you know and and and amateur historian, but I never, no, I never fantasized that I was gonna have an opportunity to work on that. But Trojan Horse is only, like, it makes Disney look like a dupe. They knew what they were getting into. No, no, they came and said, hey, here's these five years, and this is the show,

and they knew that my concept for the show, they tried the show different ways before. They tried to make it a, you know, butch and Sundance, casting in the robot going, Save the Tessarack or whatever. And they were smart. It was smart shit, but it was like, wow, what do you do? You're going to run out of story nutrients very quickly.

So I kept saying, if I was going to do it, or what you should do, because I wasn't trying to get the job, you should do. You should take the guy back to when he was a roach, the worst night of his life, and see if you can five years if you can get him to be the guy in the other movie and that trip. And that five years of the calendar in Star Wars lore is just super potent. It's this epic rise of fascism and authoritarianism and takeover, and it's a whole bunch of people oppressed backed into a corner having to react. It's literally history coming and kicking down the door of all the people that are there.

I'm like, okay, well, that's, that's, you want me to do like, in the end, 1,500 pages on that? It's revolution. Yeah, definitely do that. And so it wasn't entirely duplicitous. Did, you've obviously worked with IP. That's why I did the job, though. That's why I did the show. To do that.

To do that, yes. Working with IP is not something new for you, obviously. But, I mean, this is a bit of, well, I mean, you know, you know, you know, you know, You're thinking of Robert Ludlam books that are beloved to a degree. I mean... Not when we started, though. Dolores Claiborne. Delores Claiborne, yes.

You're right. You're right. No, you're absolutely right. IP, you're right. You're right. So is there... Because I've heard you talk a little bit about, like, your secret weapon in a way... And you've kind of just referenced this on Rogue, even, was you weren't deferential

to the Vatican, as it were. You kind of came at it as a writer first, and less as a worshiper at the altar of all things, Star Wars. Yes, I have fed my... family through disrespect of IP. Your words, not mine, but... But I am kind of... No, it's true.

Yeah. Delores Claiborne... Super, like, Stephen King likes that movie. And, like, that movie, if you read the book, it's extremely different, except the character that Kathy Bates plays, the Loris Claiborne, is identical to the book. She's like, it's

so true to who she is. It's just everything else is different. Got it. So it's like really true in a way. Born, the books were out of print. Rogue, it was like there's a corpse on the table. What are you going to do? Could someone revive the, you know, can get life support? Can you, could someone come in

and save it? It doesn't help to be a fan at that point. It helps to be a cardiothoractic. No, whatever. Clear. Yeah. No, like battle, right? No, like that, like it doesn't help you to be into it.

Yeah, precious about it. Not being into it helps you do it. I mean, I know you're not going to say anything about this, but I'm just going to do my duty to ask this question. Because I've asked Gareth about this. I've talked to Chris White's. You all clam up when Rogue One comes up. Is there like a blood pact on like we're never going to talk about what happened on Road? I have fed my family by not talking about Rogue.

Okay. I just, for the record, I'm just curious. I got one more. One more to go. One more. My wife is out there somewhere. I don't know. All right.

So you get in, Kathy gives you this extraordinary opportunity and you run with it. Season one is fantastic and you have this very ambitious plan. We're going to do five years, five seasons. That's what we said in the beginning. Right. That was said to everybody out loud and that was your intent. You kind of have a creative breakdown at some point. Yeah, I'm not, like I don't want to appear too slick or to.

here too slick or like together because I took this job ahead. I mean, you could not be, and I'm like, it's not like I've been my eyes closed to the business or to other people that have done shows. The, my blindness and naivete and ignorance about what I was getting into was stunning, really stunning. And I thought I could direct the first three episodes and we had a writer's room for a week

and they were getting the scripts in And absent COVID, there's no show. COVID, like, put the brakes on everything and reset everything and let me learn a way to run the show remotely in a way that really was incredibly effective for the system that we developed to make it. COVID saved the show.

So I wasn't really impression about what I was getting into at all. I was really stupid. So I really regretted it. I was hoping COVID. would take the show away. So what's the turn? When do you actually, you just hit upon this new story structure

of when you're talking to Diego? They kept saying, okay, you don't have to direct. Okay, you can stay there. You know, it's like, I'm not going to England and die for the show, because that was deep COVID. And UK was, I don't know who followed the UK COVID was crazier than here in some ways.

And, man, super aggressive. They wanted to go. and an amazing producer, Zana Wallenberg, who produced Chernobyl, and she's been my sister all the way through this. She's literally the mother of the show in many ways, and she's just going to go. And Disney was the first up, and they started testing, and there was kind of shamed into continuing, right?

And I was rewriting everything. I rewrote my scripts first. They weren't good enough. I started rewriting everything else that came in. We started hiring directors, and around, I don't know, late winter I was able to get out of quarantine in London and go up to Scotland where we were shooting. By that point, the work that was required to make the show at its minimum was just bedazzlingly blinding to look at. It's really epic amount of work and a number of people and money and just time. And Diego, who's, Diego Luna, who's been my partner on this

all the way through, we were in a, you know, we went to a backyard in a little hotel in Scotland and it was like, oh my God, we told them we would do five years at 60 episodes. Nobody, you literally physically could, if we're gonna do it like this, you couldn't physically do it. His face will be like, I mean, de-aging you can do a lot, but you can't do.

I mean, and it was impossible, what are we gonna do? And we came up with a plan to do the second season, to do the four years of the second season in one season. And that led to a whole series of interesting decisions that ended up, it wasn't being so smart, it was being lucky. It was like this shit just presented itself in front of you and like, oh my God, we have four blocks and there's four years and what happened if you came back for three days and that couldn't work, but it does.

And it really, it was a very fortuitous, experimental, exciting, storytelling, dramatist, I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times. And I'm Paul Shear, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters. We come together to host Unspool, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits. Fan favorites, must-season, and case you missed them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Greece to the Dark Night.

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We have Leonardo DiCaprio leading a revolution in one battle after another, Timothy Chalemay playing power ping pong in Marty Supreme. Let's not forget Emma Stone and Jorgos Lanthamos' Bugonia. Dwayne Johnson, he's coming for that Oscar. In The Smashing Machine, Spike Lee and Denzel teaming up again, plus Daniel DeLewis's return from retirement. There will be plenty of blockbusters to chat about two. Tron Aries looks exceptional, plus Mortal Kombat 2,

and Edgar writes, The Running Man, starring Glenn Powell. Search for Raiders of the Lost Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. I've alluded to this already like the fact that it's such a sprawling work that ironically despite the fact that it's called andor this is like a gigantic ensemble there are so many speaking parts so many significant 400 speaking parts in two seasons I mean it doesn't get bigger than that no I'm stupid it's such a thin line between genius and stupidity though oh my god no it's but look there are episodes where Cassian is barely in it or not in at all. And talk to me a little bit about fleshing out this ginormous ensemble and filling

in all the blanks and making it something that's, I don't know, that makes us fall in love with everyone from Clea to Luthon to Dick. I mean, it's crazy. I've been overpopulating scripts for a while. And I've been accused of that before. You always turn a script in and they go to budget and they go, wow, do you realize how many, yeah. So I'm the day player's friend and I really, I like to tell stories. I don't know, I really use it that way and I don't know, anyway. But this was an extreme case of that.

But I guess in the same way that I said that the version that Disney was originally thinking about doing, which was, you know. The two-hander or something. Yeah. Heserac was so limited, it just seemed so claustrophobic. I think I'm so, through experience, you know, so nervous about not having something super exciting to turn the page to, I was like, oh, you know what? I'm not gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna populate this

thing and and there's always gonna be someplace interesting to go and all these people are gonna inform each other about each other and the heart, and I've learned over the last millennium of doing this that I've learned how to get people in the same room together. It's hard work that. And like people watch BORN movies. What's the hardest thing in the BORN movies, you know, a speech or a, you know, some Brewera thing. It's not. It's really, it's like orchestrating literally so people can talk to each other, you know. And I, so I'm like, I can get every, if I can get all these different people and get them together and then Nina, Nina Gold, who you've seen millions of, I mean, she'd Game

of Thrones, she did, I mean, what she's done every major show, casting agent in London. She's just a wonderful person and Martin Ware who's her partner and I, and I was, you know, she was gifted to us and she really dug what we were doing and we started and can you speak to a little bit of the casting actually because there are some amazing casting discoveries. Like, I do, I watch a lot. And yes, there are some very recognizable faces in here, some faces that you, some actors you've inherited from right, et cetera. A couple, yeah, mostly are, yeah. But I'm saying is mostly, yes, they are new. And they're, they're not giant name actors. Was that a conscious decision? There's just

so many great actors over there. Another American showrunner, remain nameless, said to me on the way over, he goes, man, you're going to be a pig and shit. He goes, you're going to go to Nina and like you're gonna see these actors he goes and all these Brits won't hire them because they were on EastEnders for eight years or they the Cadbury spokesperson or they or Coronation Street and they're like they're so snobby and awful over there he goes these people are gonna come in you're gonna see them they're really great actors they're fantastic people you're gonna have no filth you're not gonna have any bias and you're gonna and that's that's our show and I

think a lot of people have been shown up in the UK by the people that we and, like, said, hey, maybe you should, I mean, a lot. And it was a pleasure for Nina, I think, who had a lot of people in her back pocket. And a lot of people you see on Thrones or slow horses. You'll see a lot of things. The shows are all cross-pollinating now. But, man, they have a deep talent pool over there.

Some of the amazing acting talent here, Stell and Scarsguard, we know. But the actor you found for Clea, I mean, this relationship, which we didn't really, I mean, if you've seen the entire series, you know how resonant this relationship. is and how important this character turns out to be to the Star Wars story.

Last night, her shit dropped, yeah. The backstory. Like, anybody who watch, anybody who's in, you're on the ground floor of an actor investment. You know, you see an actor early. I would really, if I was buying stock, I would buy Elizabeth Dullow. So that relationship and that unexpected kind of origin story

for lack of a better term that we see in the flashback. Yeah. Was that seated right from the beginning? Tell me how that evolved, how, who they are to each other in your mind. When Stellan came on the show in the very beginning, when we were going to do five, I guess, at some point, he was like, I will, they want me to make this, you know, these contracts are so prohibitive. And he says, you got to promise to kill, I'll come on to, but you've got to promise to kill me in two years. So I'm like, well, yeah, all right, like, give me two years. And if you want to stick around, I'll do it.

If not, I have the pen. And then it was like, and we tried to come up with some, he's not really a backstory guy. He's not a really, he's not a needy kind of actor. But I, like, came up with some elaborate backstory or a couple different versions, and he was like, ah, and we both agree that they sank under their own weight, and they weren't worth it. And he goes, look, he goes, let's table this, and I just, I don't want my backstory to be revenge. And as long as it's not revenge, I'm into it. And then we shot the first, as we're shooting the first season, there's a scene that we shot probably about halfway through our shooting when Faye Marse Veil shows up at the gallery, and she's flush from. running this heist and she's not supposed to be there.

And she confronts, and these two women do not like each other, as territorial battle over who's really dominant with him. And Faye Marseille says to him, you know, I gave him Aldani, what have you done for him lately? And she says, I don't do lately, I do always. And like this, like, we're like, look at her. And like the way she just rose all the way through. So then you get to the second season, you're like,

okay, well, we have to explain their backstory. And then the decision train becomes inevitable, where it falls becomes inevitable. Dedra and Cyril. Greatest love story of all time. Wow, greatest love story of all time. I don't know, man. That says more about me than you.

Turn out the lights, right? Wow. That's like, wow. I mean, that's another case where, again, actors I wasn't familiar with, they have such interesting, unusual vibes with each other, solo. Talk to me how that relationship evolved. I see what they did.

Cyril was an early, like I had that, I used navigational scenes, like I write a scene, I plot through a lot of dialogue, so I sketch scenes and sometimes I don't even know where they're gonna go. The scene where he, his first scene, where he's called in by his superior, he's investigated this double murder and he's changed his uniform and his manager is just this amazing, another British actor, who just is like, could not be more exhausted with this, you know, ferret of an employee.

And so he was my Javert, you know, I'm like, oh, there's a guy who's going to be obsessed with my hero all the way through. So he stood up right away. And I can't remember exactly where she came from, but she rose early. And as they, as I plotted them together, and Kyle came in an audition and lived. Literally, when I, pre-COVID, literally in the audition, I'm like, okay, I said to Nina, like, okay, let's have that. That's the guy. And Denise, my wife and I had gone to see people places things in London early, the show that she did that won the Olivier. We saw it on Roe, really early, 10 years ago. We were like, we went to dinner afterwards, I'm like, oh, my God, that woman has to do that eight other times this week.

It was just crazy how amazing she was. So when Nina brought her in, I didn't even really have to, I don't think she read. I was like, okay, she's a freak. And in concert with the two of them. She was really edgy during the season about not having a romance. I do not want my character be just submerged into a romance. What happens is I get a romance and then the whole thing will be a love story. I'm like, I don't think, I don't know, well, we'll see, okay.

Now they're really into it. Oh, my God. You see them on the, they're like, they're together in a, on a, they're two very unusual people as well. They're very amusing. Late in the season, she describes her character, she says, I'm a scavenger. Maybe it's just because I saw Michael Clayton like the night before, but I think of I'm a janitor. Is there a connection? They're self-identifying what they, what they're function in the universe?

No, that's just me becoming a more declarative writer. Fair enough. Fair enough. The gift of inheriting an actor, Mon Mothma, John Viev is amazing in this. Genevieve, yeah. Genevieve, yeah. Genevieve, O'Reilly. Genevieve, O'Reilly.

Again, that's someone you inherit. You don't even know what you do that. I have no choice in that. No, I worked with her maybe one day out of her. maybe one day on Rogue, so I met her once, and you have to have her. So it's like, all right, well, I don't know, you know. I mean, there's so much, a lot has been made about her speech to the Senate, which is just remarkable.

Again, are you writing to the strengths of your actor by then? Yeah, I don't know who she is when we start, and Zana says, you know, she's a lot better than people think, and what could we do with her? And, you know, you're kind of road testing people, and I'm having a lot. lots of conversations, even in both iterations of pre-COVID, post-COVID, whatever, I'm very curious about what she can do. How far can you go with her? And oh, my God, you're like, you know, you're like plunk it on the keys and you're like, you know, and you peel the tape off. Oh my God, it's a freaking Steinway, you know? I mean, she's like, holy cow. And

she's been this unutilized actor. Again, so many people in the show have been underutilized for so long in the UK, shitty cop shows, you know, and like, oh, got to go to a series in, you know, Canada to pay my rent and whatever. And like, she was just, wow. And then, you know, it's really, it's really beautiful. You start to write for the person, and they keep elevating, and as they elevate, then you realize you could do more. And, like, I would contend that her performance in the show is the most elaps.

and complicated and her character has the most tortured experience in the show because everything that she does is observed. Everybody else can go out and she has a cousin in the show who Faye Marseilles plays and her cousin is sort of like a rich girl who joined the battered Meinhauf or something like that. And like her sister's off like shooting guns and active, but they do, they do connect and Genevieve said to me one day, she goes, I'm so jealous of Faye, she goes out and gets to do a jump off dams and stuff.

I go, that's exactly what's happening for Mon. She's trapped. Everybody watched what she's doing. And Genevieve, I don't know if she learned on the show, or she came, but there are so many places in the show. I don't know if we have a, I don't know what clips we're showing, but like, where she, this mask will come, this, you'll watch her just arm up without doing anything. And the escalation of that and the importance of it as the show.

show goes on becomes, she's just, man, I, I think her performance is central, you know, as central as Diego's to the show. We talked about how the early ideas from Kathy's group was about this kind of two-hander. You do bring in K2, obviously, as the show progresses towards it. And in such a perverse, amazing origin story, it's pretty remarkable. Was that something, I know there was an alternate idea that you had. There was a whole bunch of, yeah, Yeah, and you talk about Canon. I mean, Canon doesn't, I usually try to deal with it and, and I'm really sympathetic and into it.

I was annoyed to find out that somebody had, in the interim between Rogue and that had written an origin story for K2 and it's like, no, I'm not paying attention to that. We're not doing that, but what was my point that was so... How did you, how did you wound on the origins of K2 in... Oh, you know, is it? We, my brother got burned. My brother was one of the writers on the show. Bo Willemond and Dan Gilroy and Tom Bissell came in to help me out and do episodes on the show

and sort of do the collaboration on a lot of the building. And there was an episode that was a whole self-contained episode about K2 and that, and Danny wrote this elaborate horror movie episode that we had to scrap for money. but I can't remember I wanted to stall the K2 thing as long as possible and I really knew it would be great if we waited the Gallantutic got impatient

you know it was hard to wait and everybody got impatient waiting but my experience on Rogue was that he was a very difficult character to take around to do plot with he's very hard couldn't do anything with him you can't go anywhere he can't hide or anything but when he comes you want him to be strong So we did it that way. Is it, is it, it must be an important decision to make when you do in this show reference the force. You do have a lot, you do have the may have force be with you towards the end of the show.

At the very end he says that, yeah. Right. So is that, is that like a, I don't know. But I have force in the show. I put a force healer in. Yes. So talk to me a little bit about the, this. It wasn't in my original plan.

Yeah. But I, I felt like if I could get it in, it would be. It would be abusive to not have it, to not touch on it if I could. Like, to the real people who really care, like, you know, if I could get it in, I would. There's an early scene in the first two episodes where Cassian has to, he's stealing a test ship, and he's supposed to deliver to another pilot, and he lands on this planet, and there's these idiot rebels there that are in a mutiny that's kind of like to show you in a microcosm what's going to happen later on.

the funny, crappy version. And at the end of that, too, when he escapes, when he pulls away, you realize, oh my God, he was in Yavin, which is the epic Star Wars where it's the base, the rebel base. And it's the beginning of the rebel base. It was like, wow, so he's kind of a little zealogy. He's kind of at all these places when all these epic things,

he's at Aldani, and he's here, and he survives this and that and the other thing. There is some element of destiny that I shouldn't ignore. And reluctant destiny is really cool. I mean, there's a really major religion that's based on it. And Diego's really good at looking like Star Wars Jesus. And like it's like all, and like, but how to do it so it's not cheesy and how to do it so you're not. Mission accomplished, not cheesy. Yeah, no.

And like, and so tiptoed into a. a place, you know, that character of, what's the hook on that scene? If you watch that scene, what lets me in? What lets me in is when she says thank you to him. She senses him across the place and she's kind of a faker in a way and people come to be healed but she doesn't really feel it anymore, she can't do anything. And here's this guy across the thing who doesn't want to even talk to her and she can feel something across the thing and she doesn't even know what it is and then she does this thing

and she's like, thank you. You, like, restored this feeling. So it's really kind of, it's oblique, and it freaks him out, and it confirms something for Adria, for Bix. So that was sophisticated and subtle enough to meet my thresholds not being cheesy. Right. And then it works.

Then it's like, then it has value. Is there, look, I mean, this show as a whole, this large ensemble, these are the forgotten for the forgotten heroes Forgotten people. The gravel. We say the gravel that the road to the revolution is built on, yeah. So you can kill them off or not kill them off. You have license.

You can leave them, and you do. You leave many alive. So was there, did any make it that weren't intended to make it or vice versa that you went back and forth on on who's going to make it to the end? I, boy, no, not really. What really, I tell you how people run different shows, and boy, greatest show ever, Sopranos, right? And, I mean, seriously, no complaints about the Sopranos. But I was, did you watch a documentary about the Sopranos?

I haven't watched it yet. It's really cool. It's weird. And like, like, actors would show up for table reads to find out if they lived or died. Right. Which is like, that's the antithetical, like, I talked to people six months beforehand, you know, like, get ready and make your car payments because you're out. It's like, no, but I like, oh my God. No, so we, I had a pretty, I want.

I want to, I was pretty, it's an open communicative process and I, you don't want to, you don't want to kill people gratuitously or anything. I don't, it had, it had a, it had a rationale to it. How much of the ending, we obviously knew this was going to lead directly into Rogue one. Right. So you had part of, you had some shots, some ideas of how this was going to end, but you do end, and I apologize if some haven't watched the entire thing. So I'm going to try not to your specifics. Well, it ends with a series of, there are five women. that you kind of talk about their fates at the end. Was that something that was, how did you arrive at how to kind of sum up?

I think of all the things in the show, if my brother Johnny and I, who's the, it's not just the editor, he's the Post, he's the master builder of Post. I think if you showed Johnny and I that last montage, that last sequence like three or four years ago while we were doing season one, we would go, yeah, that's where we're going to end up. Like, nothing else of season two, we probably could have shown us all kinds of things, and we were really? Wow, you're going to do that? But like the last thing, that we knew where we were. And I think Diego started saying this first a while ago, and I think it's really true.

I think the ability to make the show, the reason that it exists is all because we knew what the ending was. and we really, there's relief in that, there's objective in that, there's, you can marshal your energy because you know how far you have to go to get there and you know you can sprint at the end if you have to. There's so many things that that does that help you. And you see so many shows where people start with something really great, a great idea, really cool, really hip, and like they get going and they get traction and they're like, whoa, what do we do? And like, some Sometimes it really works out and they really figure it out, but it's tough to make it. You know, you're swimming, you're out at sea.

We were never at sea. We always knew where we were going, so you couldn't get too far lost. Putting my Star Wars fanboy head on for a second. You do reference Tarkin and Palpatine in the show. Talk about them. Yeah, ever a discussion of actually showing either of them? Well, I was part of the Tarkin project. on Rogue, so no.

No. And Palpatine, you know, what are you going to do, show somebody and one as a, what's he going to say and come back and what's he going to do? Right, no, no. Right. You have sadly said your time with Star Wars

is done. That was for now. Ten years. Wow, give me a break. We're greedy. You made some of the best Star Wars ever. And you found, it's a sandbox where you were able to pour all of your ideas into. Why not do more?

You could pour more ideas into it. I don't know. I mean, don't ever say never. But, you know, 24 hours and two hours of Rogue, that's 26 hours. That's a lot. I'm leaving the campsite cleaner than I found it, I think. If you were teaching, yes.

for the next showrunner, writer, whatever of a Star Wars project, you're teaching the Star Wars writing for Dummies course. What's lesson one? What do you say? I don't think people should... I'm not into people. I hate being a benchmark or, like, an example.

I like the... I've watched a couple episodes of The Skeleton Crew. I actually think it's like, if I had a kid, I would watch that show with my kid. It's kind of like, I don't, I think they should just do, I don't know, man, I don't, I don't, I don't, don't try to do this. Don't, don't do this at home, right? I don't know. Hey, Michael.

Hey, Tom. So big news to share it, right? Yes, huge, monumental, earthshaking. Heartbeat, sound effect, big. Mink is back. That's right. After a brief snack nap, we're coming back, we're picking snacks, we're eating snacks, we're raiding snacks. Like the snackologist we were born to be. Mates is back. Mike and Tom, eat snacks.

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questions about your background because your resume is so storied and there's so many amazing successes that I would be remiss if I didn't mention a couple of them you you were your dad was a noted playwright a very successful writer yet you were a late bloomer when it came to writing you were a reluctant writer is that fair to say yeah yeah I came late yeah I didn't I mean I never cashed a check until I was I don't know 35 32 32 yeah something I was in my 30s when the first time I quit tending... 30.

At 30, I stopped tending bar. I have a child and I get my first check from Canon Films, yes. Canon films, no less. Benahem Golan, yeah. Yes, there's a good doctor. That's how old I am. Yeah, amazing. Amazing.

Were you on set for the early gigs that you, as a writer, like, were you on set for cutting edge or Dolores or any of those? Well, really different. And really, one of the reasons that things worked out from me is that cutting edge, I had the traditional writers experience. where I went up to Toronto on my first movie and very exciting. I go for the, because the director was all into having table reads and rehearsals and all the monkey business that goes with like pretending that you're like doing something,

you know, all that stuff. And I walked in the office and I was like, oh, my God, here's this production office. All these people work here. And the line producer was a really old school line producer. And they brought me into him and he said, oh, he goes, well, he goes, welcome. He goes, I'm going to try to get rid of you as soon as I can. And I go, what? He goes, I hate having the writer on the set.

That was my introduction. And literally. And I was like, okay. And then when I, later on, Taylor Hackford, who made Dolores Claiborne, was the absolute opposite of that in every way. And Taylor just put his arms around me. And from the very first moment of pre-production, all the way through the final publicity campaign,

of three movies, Dolores Claiborne, Dolores Claiborne, and Devil's Advocate and Proof Life. I mean, for 10 years of my life, I had access to everything. Every actor, I got, I mean, sometimes more than I wanted. I won't go into that, but like. Well, I was going to ask about Devil's Advocate, because there's some amazing speeches in there that Pachino delivers, the absentee landlord speech. I mean, are you responsible for that? And Did you work with? Yeah, man. I mean, that's, oh, my God.

Yeah, no, Taylor threw me with Al for, yeah, I spent a lot of time with Al on that. There's a lot more speeches that aren't even in the movie, yeah. That was an extravaganza. We could probably spend at least two hours talking born movies. We will not do that. But, yeah, speeches. Speaches. Big monologues.

Big monologues. I was going to say the born movies, though, in and of itself. you could spend, we could do a master class on how to, I mean, those are chaotic movies, how they're made, Doug Lyman, a beautiful, chaotic filmmaker, green grasses, handheld, Verite style, and everything about, if you read about the production, there's a lot of stories around that. Is it, I don't know, is it a miracle to you that those films came out as well as they did? I'm going to say what I always say, it is the most shambolic, fucked up success ever.

It just kept rolling, and everybody didn't like each other and different things. It was just a mess, and it just kept working out. And you just went along? I went along as far as I could. And then I tried to, seriously, I tried in Legacy to give them a Marvel Universe. I really did. I think if you, you know, it's a much maligned movie because Matt Damon's not in it, but he was never supposed to be in it.

But like, that movie was, if you think about it from the point of view, I'm saying, I was really trying to give them a Marvel universe access to all areas and blood was so bad. that even that didn't. Yeah, I mean, I've talked to Renner about this. He was, he was amped to do that. Jeremy and I were good. But he wanted, he wanted to mix it up with Matt on the crossover film. That was, that was the plan.

Oh, my God, no, I don't want to get into that. But all you have to know is that some things can succeed in spite of themselves. And it's also because Matt Damon is just like the greatest actor ever, right? I will say that. And the basic story, right, isn't he? And he really is, man. He's amazing. And the basic, the story of someone who's continually throwing a gun away to try to, you know, who's an assassin is really compelling.

Another reluctant, another reluctant savior. Yeah. I'm sure, I hope you're okay talking about Michael Clayton. You should be because it is a great film that has stood the test of time. And, I mean, as celebrated as it was, and it was celebrated, you were nominated twice for writing and directing. It has, its stature only grows. It has become. Last couple of years it has some traction, yeah, I don't know why, but yeah, the last couple of years there was a hole

Did you feel like you were in conversation with the Lumet films with the verdict? Was that on your mind when you were constructing that? Because it feels like it's a lost girl from that era. I just went I went to TCM and introduced some movies and the one movie I had to do was clout, you know, we showed clout, you know, clout was like our, that's our look. Yeah, no, we were, it was made by people who were obsessed with 70s Pakula movies. Movies, yeah. Denzel has said it's the one movie he regrets turning down Denzel Washington. Oh, no. Have you ever? No, I've read that, no. You've never thought.

He did a movie with my brother where he plays a lawyer a few years later, though, didn't he? He did. That's right. Does he do him this? Because he like, no, but no, he didn't want to work with a first-time director. Right. Well, you got the right actor at the right time. He didn't want to work with it.

George turned me down. And before I went to Denzel, George turned me down two years earlier because he didn't want to work for the first time director. Crazy. Okay. So, oh, is that your voice in the cab at the end, by the way? The amazing... Yes. Yeah, I thought so. Where are we going? What are we doing? You guys remember the end of Michael Clayton, that long credit sequence where he's just in the cab? Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. All right. Let's talk about some audience questions. Let's do this. We want to know, was there ever a version of the story where Cassian finds his sister?

A lot of people asked that question, and I think that probably I thought about it in the beginning for a minute, hot minute, but it became very clear to me that the absence of his sister was far more valuable than her presence. There's a line with, he goes to the whole movie, you know, trying to come, you know, he leaves his mother and he doesn't come back in time, and like not getting there in time and not helping people. And at the very end, there's a really cool line, very well delivered. delivered by Faye Marseille, who plays Val, and Mon Motha comes to her at the very end and goes, God, I've come to ask you if he's telling the truth, and he went and saved Clay against orders, and he got in all this trouble.

And she goes, you know, he should just stop saving people. She's being ironic. And like, that's worth more to me than a coincidental cheesy scene where he happens to run into his sister or something. So she became more valuable. And everybody has things that are unresolved as good. Somehow he's become, he's already a tragic figure in Star Wars Canon. You've somehow made him that much more tragic, given the ending of this.

Diego never came and said, hey, can I have, where's my sister? No, but I mean, like, he never asked for it. I've heard you, you've said that, do you have a special fondness for Cyril of all the characters? Do you have some kind of connection, some kind of empathy for? Above everyone else? Yeah. Well, maybe. In a way, I've been unleashed in the last two weeks to use the word fascism.

I had media training before that. We're getting the good version of Tony. I can use that word. And, you know, what, all right, I'll go for it. What does fascism do? It doesn't just destroy the people that comes for first and the communities and the organizations and the law and the truth and the rest of it. Inevitably, in every model of fascism that there's been, it ultimately comes and destroys

its early proponents and its foot soldiers and its underclass. destroys its, because it's all centralized power. It eventually eats its young. And I'm not consciously starting off saying, oh, I want to write a show where it does that. Right. I'm not doing that. But the result is, I mean, Dedra's a true believer. She grew up in an imperial kinder block.

She's a zealot. Whatever chaos is inside her is very contained. But Cyril is a romantic character, maybe the most romantic character in the world. in the show. And there's a scene early on in the first season, if you ever watch it, where he's back in his mother's, that apartment, that box he lives in with her. And he's in his childhood room, and he's at his window in the morning, sitting on the side of his bed, and there's a thing where, like, there's one, 30 seconds of sunlight comes

through his room, and he's waiting for that, like, he's waited his whole life. And on his desk, there's little action figures. And like, that guy could go, his fantasies could be anything. And he buys into this fascist imperial mindset and constructs everything. This whole, the whole cathedral he builds inside himself is all about that and DEDRA and everything else. And then that, and when that comes crashing down, that's really sad to me and I think I mean, I don't know, I don't want to say that I'd pick him to identify more than anybody

else, but maybe you get some idea of how, like, if you're writing well, you're, you feel that way about all of them, right? Right. And you could, I could make that speech about a lot of people in the show, I think, I hope. You're not, I've heard you talk about this. I mean, a lot of folks want to kind of, you know, draw parallels between the world we live in now and this show. You're not the type of writer to look at the news and then say, how do I pull you?

that into these characters. Not tonight. But these stories, still a little media. That guy. Still a little media training left. Get him out of here. But these stories are cyclical.

It's sad, but true, yes. You are not returning to Star Wars, but you are working on a film. You have a script that you want to make. Yeah, yeah, very happily over the summer I wrote So I don't have like the burden of like, oh, I'm done, what am I going to do? No, I wrote a movie over the summer, so I got the monkey off my back. I don't have to worry that I'm frozen.

And this is, without saying too much movie music world, Oscar Isaac is attached. Yeah, no, yeah, no, it's about movie music. Yeah, it's about a cellist who comes back to L.A. He's part of a session family and after 20 years returns to L.A. to cut sessions for movies again. And Oscar is potentially your guy? Yeah, no. Oscar's been standing by me as we try to get money for the last six months. struggling he was almost your Aaron Crosses I recall he ended up in the film

but not he auditions right he came in and gave an audition for us when he was nobody he was he was yeah he was absolutely nobody and he came out and gave an audition for the legacy part that was you know Frank Marshall and Kathy Kennedy and I sat in my hotel room in LA and watched like 40 times at night trying to figure out how we would convince you universal to do something. No, I mean, it didn't, it couldn't work out. He didn't have any, he was nobody, but he's, boy, he's a great actor, isn't he? So you tried to sell them on it, but he was just, he didn't have the statute. There was at least a conversation. We made, yeah,

we, yeah, you couldn't really go, you couldn't make demands and stuff, because it was pretty obscure ask. He really was nobody. He's just out of Juilliard, he was a, but wow, what, I mean, talk, how auditions shake you up, you know, and that happens, you know, you, you, People shake you up in an audition. Wow. Best unproduced script in your drawer that you've never had a chance to make? Is there one that's... A couple.

I mean, I think the best stuff I ever wrote is in there. Really, honest to God. Yeah, no, I think best scripts have not been made. I think that's true for most writers, yeah. And that's just because it's not the right genre at the right time. A thousand reasons. As lucky as I am tonight, I had some bad luck. I mean, seriously, man.

I mean, a lot of bad, I mean, no kid, I mean, really, that's what it is. It's bad luck. You kind of picture there's like an Aztec stone wheel in Hollywood of availability and moment. No, I mean, like, and when the, you know, some calendar and like, think of all the great movies that didn't happen because the right person wasn't available for the part at the right moment or the movies that did happen because the person was right. And it's, you see something that you love with the right person and the thing comes together. It's a miracle kind of. But you can't, you know, but a lot of times you have your hand slammed in the door, you know.

It's just, I mean, it's a grinder's job. You've got to grind for a long time to sit here tonight. You've got to grind. So you're going to watch Star Wars as a fan going forward. What do you hope and expect to see? I mean, they have some kinky projects that they're trying to know. I, no, like, yeah, no, like 25,000 years BC. Right, the Manco, Star Wars and a horror movie and some other stuff.

And like, yeah, no, yeah. Are you, are you going to weigh in when Kathy calls over a little... I do that for everybody. I do that for a lot of, I mean, that's, I mean, I have a community of, you know, I have a, you know, an elder screenwriter community of people that I ask for advice, that ask me for, yeah, people call you. I mean, there's people I'll read for, and people. that I'll ask to read for me.

Yeah, I think that's a community service that people give each other. William Goldman was how I got in this job. I was going to say Goldman was kind of a family Oh my God, he's the ultimate... Well, he was the one who taught us how to do all this. He was the guy who basically, you know, spread it around. He was the great...

At his funeral, Scott Frank and I did the eulogies at his funeral. And Scott gave this amazing... The amazing Scott Frank gave this incredible eulogy for Bill. And he... Everybody had a different task at that. at the funeral and Scott's tranche was how Bill gave

back and how what a mentor he was and his big room was in what used to be the Ziegfeld Theater and he he said okay everybody in the room who Bill read your script and took you to lunch or called you up

and like read your shit and stand up and oh my God and like there were 40 people stood up in the room and it was a you could have built a movie studio for decades off the 40 people that stood up it was like wow yeah he yeah so

so it's important for you to pay that forward I know I feel like it's yeah I'm I I'm second generation with all that stuff so I probably feel more tradition bound than but I really value all that it holds great value for me that

traditional shit No, I really does. It does, you know. Keep doing the traditional shit, passing it on, making the good work. This is a huge accomplishment, man. Thank you. It's not just me. This entire audience, we all love what you do and what you've contributed to Star Wars and to just great drama.

Andor, season two, it's out there. You guys know it's spread the good word and give it up one more time for the great... Wow, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And so ends another edition of And so ends another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Remember to review, rate and subscribe to this show on iTunes

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