The Watch - Tony Gilroy Got Braver and Bolder for ‘Andor’ Season 2

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Chris and Andy talk about the first three episodes of ‘Andor’ Season 2 and how the show’s world has gotten even more detailed in its second season (1:00). Then they are joined by creator Tony Gilroy to talk about whether or not the audience response to the first season affected how he wrote the second (21:21), the benefits of having a creative community while making the show (37:04), and bringing more conference rooms to the 'Star Wars' universe (51:41). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Tony Gilroy Senior Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production and Editing: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me in the studio, hungover from another Mothma wedding, it's Andy Greenwald. I love, there are many things that we've wanted out of a Star Wars show,

but one that accurately reflects the experience of attending one later in life. God bless. Andy, very special episode. We're coming to you Tuesday evening, the first three episodes of season two of Andor have dropped tonight. And we are coming to you with an interview with the creator of the show.

Tony Gilroy, Tony has obviously been on the watch several times to talk about Andor. He's one of our favorite guests, one of our favorite people to talk to, one of the most amazing screenwriters that I feel like has ever worked in the format. And I'm so excited to have him back on the show. I'm also so excited to have Andor back. It is among my favorite shows that it's come out this decade. It was both of our number one show. of our number one.

And, you know, the season comes back. It's been off for a couple of years. Obviously, it's a very difficult and huge production, a difficult show to make. Shows back, three episodes. They're going to be doing this again in the story cycles that they did the first season. So the first three episodes that I believe next three, three,

you know, a longer season. A longer season. And what jumps out at me about this show, again, is the density of it. I think when the first season came out, my initial reaction was just such deep pleasure that the like my star wars was basically be but the star wars that was always in my head the star wars that was um politically diverse complicated moral gray areas outside of jettai outside of dark side and light side you know like

basically i i a real granular tactile screwed up world full of uh trade commissions and rebellions would be shown on screen. And it was, and it was obviously so incredible. This coming back to it, I don't know about you, man, but I found it like I had to get my C-legs. And I've watched these episodes twice now, these first three episodes. And the second time around, I was like, oh, so like, not only because I feel like I watched them basically together, but I think you just go back and you're like, oh, that little

line here or this gesture there, this is what's happening here. What did you think of the first three episodes? I'm completely with you on the sense that there's a strange whiplash feeling in the brain and body of like, oh, we've been eating donuts for breakfast every day. And now it's just a bowl of mucely and it's going to take a minute to chew. It is so dense and it is so ultimately rewarding that it did take a second to reset the body clock for the type of show that it was going to be. I'm trying to think, having, as you said, just like you, I watched these twice already. And I'm trying, I was trying to figure out, like, what was the moment when I just felt joy, relief, and gratitude wash over me again?

Was it when we had the entire long, long scene of Cyril's mother coming to dinner at the Khorosan apartment? Was it, was it Cassian's, you know, detour into the infighting of a rebellion that doesn't even know what the rebellion is for? plus there's a weird space hippopotamus eating people. Was it learning every detail of a Transatlane wedding down to the traditional speeches that the father of the bride must make and make pretty well? Was it the fact that the show begins with a maintenance worker who's there before the Stormtroopers or even Darth Vader gets in the tie fighter, making sure that everything is parked correctly?

I don't know if it was any of those moments, but on the rewatch, the thing that I couldn't get over is after that opening sequence, which is breathtaking and funny, and we talked to Tony about it, everything the show is in a nutshell. It zooms in on the planet where Bix and Cassion, when he's there,

have taken refuge as itinerant workers, basically. And the camera swoops in low over the fields of space wheat or whatever it is, and we're moving into Bix's nightmare. But before we get there, I just paused and noticed that the fields of wheat are infested

with some sort of local bug. And I was like, oh my God, this show is a miracle. It is a miracle of just squeezing every potential aesthetic and story drop out of something that we thought was barren a long time ago. And then in light of what's happened in the industry,

even since the first season came out, I think it's a miracle that we got this much of it and we got more of it. And who knows if we'll ever get something this insanely lovingly crafted and considered again. I think you can look at it and you can you can zoom in to the bugs and the wheat. I think you can also watch that scene that essentially opens the season with Cassian and Naya, who's the Imperial double agent who he's recruited.

And it's among the best things I think Tony Gilroy's ever written. That's that conversation between the two of them. Cassian is at once having an incredibly human. connection with this person and is also seducing them to do what he needs them to do. And, you know, his foreshadowing of, I mean, obviously if you're watching Andor,

I assume you've watched Rogue One, but his foreshadowing of his own sacrifice that he will make down the line and saying like, this makes it worth it. And then his description of her joining the rebellion by saying you're coming home to yourself. Yeah. It's like, what the fuck are we doing, man?

This is so, ridiculous how there will be a piece of writing in this show that I think will articulate something that I've always felt. And that is what great writing does. Is in your mind when you think about your belief systems or your moral view of the world or whatever it is,

whether it's a religion or a political party, whatever it is, is that when you find something that you really, really, really believe in, it does feel like coming home to yourself. And to have that articulated in a Star Wars show, I don't know, maybe I'm still just a nine-year-old, but like I did think that it was an incredibly beautiful moment. That is also, you can't just let it be saccharin.

It's also, he is putting this person in extreme danger. It is espionage. It is the seduction of an agent and who the agent is running. And it's such a great scene. And it's so illustrative of what makes this show amazing. Well, also because it's for adults. And what an adult in that moment on screen is experiencing is, yes, this feels nice and this is seductive. But she says something, and I mentioned this to Tony, so I don't want to step on it.

But she says, I've had fun here. Yeah. First of all, no one in the history of Star Wars has ever admitted to having fun doing anything, let alone doing maintenance checks on Empire fighters. But I think that one of the reasons why, in addition to the incredible craftsmanship and the writing and the production values, which are unparalleled. Shout out the brilliant Luke Hull we talked to Tony about. him, but he's the production designer par excellence, and he is an EP of this season as well. But one of the things that I think that we have to cop to, that we love the show for, is that as people

who spend a worrying amount of their 30s and 40s parsing the tea leaves of thunderbolts, you know, we want a strong, confident, and smart artistic person like Tony to almost retcon our child into being worth it. Yeah. Like all the energy that we poured into Star Wars in the sandbox and then weirdly have continued to,

this show lifts up and dignifies our memories and all of the investment we made in this by saying actually there is more there. Yeah. Actually, it was a load-bearing dream. And to see...

I mean, the scene in the pilot, sorry, in the premiere, that reintroduces Ben Mendelssohn's Krennick character, who's the villain in Rogue One, again Tony will talk about the very very specific historical inspirations for that scene so we don't need to step on that but like this was the moment when I learned that the Star Wars universe has infomercials

but also the incredible efficiency and wit and style with which he delineates how a world ends not necessarily with a a giant planet destroying ship, although that's coming too, but with a meeting, you know, with the banality of evil is... And there might be nobody better in the world at writing meetings. Yeah, it's true. Story by story for this first trilogy of this season, we have essentially three planks.

Yeah. Right? And we can just sort of quickly, let's go into those. Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, we can do, since you were just talking about the Malthian Conference, which is Krennick assembling this group of people from the empire who will be working on essentially manufacturing consent for the takeover of Gorman, which is like a planet that is best known for, it's the fabric. It's twill. It's twill that comes from its spiders that are native to the planet. and you've got these imperial ghouls who are like basically spinning their own fabric of a narrative that they're going to assemble about the characteristics of the gorm people, the gorman people, you know, what they will do in order to seize this rare earth mineral that's in the planet that they need for reactor lenses.

It's like, it doesn't really matter, but what matters is by mining this thing, they'll probably destroy the planet environmentally. And Krennick has assembled all these people to figure out a way to do that both politically, but also practically. And Dedro is there, Denise Gao from the first season, obviously. And Krennick goes up to her and says, you haven't said anything yet. And she's like, you know, you can only get so far with propaganda. you're essentially going to have to prop up a fake resistance or a resistance that you can easily crush

to have a a galvanizing moment that allows the empire to convincingly then take over the planet and do what they need to do. Do you know one of the things that I find so striking about the show,

but also in reference to the scene you're talking about, is that I think sometimes by necessity, we set the bar too low of what we want in our genre entertainment. We overpraise, let's just say we praise when we see,

when we recognize humanity in the far-flung reaches of the galaxy or the toy bin, right? Or in video games or in sci-fi. Like, I see that that person may be blue, but is feeling things that I feel and thus I'm connected to the story and it's relevant to me or whatever. That tends to be the end of it. The thing that Tony is uniquely qualified to do within the structure of Star Wars is to say it's not just that we can't get out of our own way as humans,

no matter what our circumstances are. We bring our systems with us. And so this idea of taking things that have happened within the 20th century of humanity, like the planned rape, pillage and destruction of a society or of a country, just because a place is built on top of some mineral that we care about or diamonds that we covet. Or that that's going to come with us, too. our attitude about legality and immigration and refugees, that's probably going to come with us too.

And the way that he does it is feels so deeply recognizable and never preachy. It's just like, oh, God, here we are again. And that is a fundamentally different approach to this type of storytelling. And clearly the ratings bear out that it's not necessarily for everyone. But I just keep coming back to the fact. And I'm sure that, like, in the boardrooms of Lucasville, they're like, look, we've got something for everyone. Yeah, and I also think that this show will stand the test of time and we'll be revisited and all that. So not to interrupt you, though.

No, no, no. I'm only saying something that I think we feel really strongly, which is, like, these aren't action figures anymore. And that really feels meaningful at a time when both industry and just trends are pushing character story more and more into prepackaged boxes. I remember when I watched Jedi and they were rebuilding the Death Star, you know, and you're like, damn, so that's how you build a Death Star. That's really cool. And I think 80 to 90% of people are probably like, that's enough the building of the Death Star that I need to see in my life. And I just can't believe, like, we're getting to imagine the motivations and the machinations that go into finding the mineral that. that they need for the lens that they need for the reactor that they need that will go into this thing. But it's so, it's so creative to me. And it's also then to make so many obvious parallels with things that have happened historically, which Tony talks about. So I don't want to step on that. It's fascinating. Mendelssohn, awesome in this scene. But Denise Gao, I, you know, her kind of permanent frown that she's got on. She's amazing. And also, like, the mystery of, like, Deirdre and Cyril and, like...

Is that romance? But, like, what it is and where they're going and what they mean to the larger story is fascinating. Just to move through the other plot lines here, we've got Cassian who steals a tie fighter, winds up on this planet, and is going to basically hand the tie fighter off to another member of the rebellion who's going to take it from there. And instead is ambushed by a group of people called the Maya Pay Brigade who, who, unbeknownst to these Maya Pay Brigade people, are also part of the rebellion,

at least in terms of where they get their money, where they get their supplies, that doesn't seem to matter to them because they are essentially looking at Cassian as their exit from being stranded on this planet. But there's factions within the factions. Tony talks in a very funny way about how he came to cast these factions,

but it's worth noting before we get into our interview that it's a family affair because one of the factions is led by Tony's son Sam, who's an actor, and the other faction is led by, I believe his nephew-in-law. Okay. And I'll let him tell it later.

I thought this was really cool. This was also just very good old-school Hollywood, like, kind of a little Rio Bravo. There's like a standoff between these two people. They can't, there's two groups of people. They can't leave this area without one going down. So who's going to get budge? How are they going to resolve this?

it also introduced a little bit of humor to the show which I think is always welcome I thought that was a great sequence and then I think the thing that most people are going to be returning to and talking about a lot because there was a lot of nuance and a lot of ambiguity was the Mothma wedding

so this essentially is the fall of Tate Colma who was this very cool figure from the first season who is a lifelong friend and possible admirer, romantic admirer of Senator Mothma or Mom Mothma, and he helps her cover up some financial discrepancies within her own investments and accounts, but also is kind of loosens up the money train to Luthin and the rebellion and comes to her on the day of her daughter's wedding.

Which is in itself an arrangement. Yes, which is an arranged marriage. and is like, you know what? I look around and everybody else seems to be doing pretty great here. Your money got fixed.

You know, this guy's got his son married off. Everybody's doing well. And the rebellion's actually fucking my money up. Yeah. So we're going to need

to revisit the terms of the agreement. Tay wants a taste. Yes. Wets to wet his beak. And unbeknownst to him, the most dangerous man in the galaxy

is watching this all happen in an incredible three episode sequence, but especially in the third episode of Luthin, who is acting as antiquities dealer, who has brought this gift for the wedding, but is in fact a wolf stalking his prey on the perimeter of this... Hunting weakness.

Yeah, and essentially, you know, I'm not positive, but it ends with Sinter coming back from, you know, the first season she was on Aldani. She replaces Tay's driver and is like, I got you, big guy. A little Fredo-esque. Yeah, and it feels very much. like the two, my two favorite scenes were Naya and casting and talking in the first episode

and Tait and Mothma in the third episode, or not, sorry, Luthin and Mothma in the third episode where he's like, you know, something is going to have to be done about this. And Mothma's like, I don't know what you mean. And he said, how nice for you. Yeah. Shout out Ben Miles, who plays Take Home. Yeah. So you've got a bunch of stuff happening. I would say probably your first time through these three episodes, you're like, okay. We waited three years and it's a lot of dancing at a wedding. Yes. But I think that the more you sit with it, the more you think about it,

and especially if you revisit them, you start to feel like, oh, okay, like rebellion is not a straight line, right? It goes off in a lot of different directions. There's a lot of infighting. And people aren't always in it for the best reasons. You know, maybe they're in it for love, maybe they're for money. Those things are hard to control and hard to predict. I also think that when I, we started by saying that the show is,

fibrous. It's like, it's dense. It doesn't mean it's not pleasurable. It just means that unlike a lot of, there are shows that are easy to digest and there are things that feel labored, whether because of production problems or, you know, writers feeling themselves or whatever the case may be. And or to us, I think, is the rarest of things where it is a large scale canvas that in itself is made up of a thousand mini masterpieces. It does require and no, it doesn't require. It, it rewards a different level of viewing. You can breeze through these episodes three at a time in a binge and be like, oh, sick. So that's how that domino fell in the larger buildup towards Rogue One and then the original trilogy.

Or it does reward being like, you know what? I'm just going to pause on this scene and see the work that's being done here on every level of craftsmanship, from the writing to the direction to the performances, production design. It's pretty cool. And I think it'll be interesting for us to go through this because it's, it's being delivered in these chunks. Three episode chunks.

Yeah. And we're going to do our, we have not watched ahead. We're going to, we're going to watch. But it challenges the viewer where it's like, well,

what's your level of time commitment, scholarship, whatever it is? But essentially, you should probably watch these together. You should watch one through three and push through and watch them over the course of a week.

So obviously come back to this episode whenever you want to. But that's not typically how people watch television. And there's a lot of demands in people's time right now. So, like, how many people are going back and watching one through three? I don't know. But I think that this show is built to last.

And I think it's also built to build towards something in the second season. I have not watched ahead. Andy is not watched ahead. We're going to be watching in the same chunks that our viewers do so that we're kind of, like, in the moment with you. And to be clear, no spoilers past episode three with Tony. Yes. Right. Just want to say it again in case people are getting a little squirly.

We told him we didn't want to be spoiled. Yes, and he was excited to talk about just that. We're going to have Tony back on again at the end of the season, but just so happy to have this back in our lives. We should get into our interview with Tony. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul Predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, and misses.

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Fandul predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant, 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. Chris and I are thrilled beyond words to welcome back to the podcast.

One of our favorite guests, one of our favorite writers, the author of the dialogue that opens our podcast. It's true. The one and only Tony Gilroy. Welcome back, Tony. It's great to see you. it's very comfy to be back here. Thank you. We've been holding the seat for a couple years. I've heard some other people here.

They've done a good job. You've had some great guests. Yeah, but it's your chair. It's like the bench in Central Park, you know, just waiting for you to come back and sit in it. Oh, God. Oh, they're so sad those benches. This one. This is a happy bench. I know, no, but it's always, yeah, anyway. Well, congratulations on season two.

We were going to be talking to you about the first three episodes, was the first arc, all scripted by you, that just dropped. And before we get into the specifics of this episode, though, we kind of wanted you to help us get up to this point in your creative process. So when season one wrapped and you were done in the press and all that was finished with, what did the remaining story map look like to you? Like, what were your goals of where you felt like you needed these characters to get to? And did you have any of these scenes that we just saw in mind already?

or was it a blank slate in terms of the specifics? Oh, by the time we released, we had the whole, we had the whole thrust of the whole second season. We didn't have, you know, we didn't have proper scripts. I mean, we never, I mean, I don't even consider my scripts proper. I mean, I go back and just beat the shit out of my stuff. But we had the whole, we had the whole thing. I mean, clearly 10, 11 and 12 are going to be what they're going to be when you'll see it. You'll see that.

We had some economic hiccups that mandated some pretty substantial changes in the middle of the show, 456, 789. But canonically, it's on the calendar what we have to do. and Gorman is a commitment that we made right from the very beginning, and we invested heavily in Gorman. So it was pretty articulated. There was some heavy lifting on some changing some episodes, just economics. But yeah. Specifically then, let's talk about where you chose to start it.

And I wondered if, and by specifically, I mean, that beautiful striking shot of a tie fighter in maintenance in Doc. and then the scene with Cassian and the newfound spy and the pep talk that he gives her before there's an action sequence. It's such a brilliant opening to the season because it sort of sets out a lot of what you feel, like a lot of the thematic stakes for the season.

It also, in great and our tradition, I think, starts very small on a personal level, which I think is wonderful before all the mayhem in the Thai fighter ensues. does a scene like that coming from your screenplay background, like in your movie writing background, does that just come to you fully formed and you think, I've got it?

Or is that a much longer and more tortured process where you bring in some of your collaborators and you end up there? No, I mean, that, no, that all happens here. I, God, it's so sad. It was a lot of defiance in there for me. It was like, oh, you started last time, you started so slow

and, you know, and like, so a little bit of, let us show you what we could do. And I really, I mean, for me, I really,

I shockingly work as much on visuals. If I can't get a really good visual to go for me, I can't really put, and the idea of stage lights coming on, you know, like that big crank, that big stage light that comes on,

when the stage is lit. I really wanted that to announce the show. And I thought, well, let's just go full. fucking Star Wars here and do that. So he's stealing a ship, of course. He's been working for Luther. I want to suggest what he's been doing for the last year since you met him. And then I want to show he's a leader, you know. I want to show he's evolved into the leadership

of it. And then, you know, the asshole sneaky part of me is kind of going, well, we're not going to put any music on this. We're going to keep it really dry. People are going to go, oh, my God, They're just going to talk and talk and talk. And I, the speech was more, the speech turned out more exciting than I thought. It was really, it really was an important thing. And I actually, I think it's, I think it carries its own weight. I'm not, I was sort of only half kidding around about like trying to deak people. But I really, I really liked, I liked how it, how it felt.

And I liked his, his legitimate honesty about, uh, the emotional part of, I mean, what's the hook line in there for me? The hook line in there for me is when she says, oh, I've been happy here. That's the line that kicks it off from me. That's where I get excited. When I'm sketching it, I'm going, oh, wow, that's really hip.

She loves it here. And what she's really sad. And then, because I knew that Moan and the boys were going to give me a really badass next 10 minutes. So I was very relaxed about spending time there. But I thought that was such a radical thing. That's a manipulative answer. No, it's a good answer.

You mentioned the thing that I was going to bring up, which is she says, I've had fun here, which is something that no one in the history of, of Star Wars has ever said. I don't think anyone's ever had fun. Well, then we find out later a little bit that Dejra's had this incredible experience with Imperial pre-K, you know, and like, you know,

Kinder block. Kinder block, right? Isn't that what Bill de Blasio gave the city? That's right. Tony, you mentioned passingly there kind of operating with an understanding of what the discourse around the show is. And I was curious whether or not

that voice was a little louder when you guys were going. I mean, I know you said you had season two mapped out, but how much did audience response, the larger Star Wars community discourse around and or impact the writing of season two? Well, Bo and Danny and then Tom Bissell, they don't care about that.

They don't care about that. They're kind of, no, I mean, I think there's another, there's a couple things that we've done. I mean, people said, oh, you don't know how to do cliffhangers. and we'll, like, at the very end of the show, we'll do a cliffhanger. Just like, we could do whatever we want. We do what we want because we do.

We're doing everything intentionally. So there's a little bit of like, we got to a moment where we were like, we could, wow, we just could, let's just split these episodes here. And let's do a cliffhanger. And we're like, well, it's kind of late to do that, but it's kind of goofy to do that. And so a little bit of that. I mean, I listened to, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't, you know, wasn't paying attention to what people were saying.

I mean, when the show is being released, it's a little sick because you're there all the time. There's times where I am traveling or have downtime and just too much time to spend an I voyeur through it, times where I let it go. But I think it's wise to pay attention to it. I get something out of it. What do you get out of it? On the confirmation side, I get this huge uptick because the way people are talking about it and the way they're analyzing it is just so beyond anything that you could ask for. and they're like in so deep

and they're watching it for the seventh time and finding things that we buried in there and it's just like, wow, you feel like you're connecting. On the downside, it's like, you know, it's the, it's the, it's the hardcore, you know, it's the hardcore Shiite Star Wars community that really hates the show and sometimes that's fuel too.

I like that you said that you're writing the speech and you're sort of like in a small respectful way, like a little bit of a middle finger to expectations because also then you said you knew you were going to hand it off. You know what it was. Actually, it was like the, that never articulated itself until we got to the mix until we were doing tent music. And I like, and all the guys wanted, they all wanted music over that thing because it takes

music. It got to just, that speech just sucks up music like crazy. You put anything on it. It's, oh my God, break your heart. And they're like, you've got to be crazy. Not the music comes. I was like, no, no. And I really held hard.

It's one of those places where everybody's grumpy in the mix because I'm making them do this thing. But like, no, we're not going to do anything until we get to that ship. But then you get to the ship. I want people to squirm. But you get to the ship and the moment the show comes back to life for me is that he doesn't know how to drive it. And it's hilarious. Because we're coming off of decades of sci-fi storytelling where anyone's, everyone speaks English and everyone knows how to pilot everything. And this is the show that we love. And this is funny and surprising, but also thrilling. And that felt like as much of a choice as anything else to put your personality into the part of the show that you were saying,

you could have been a handoff, right? Like, you guys storyboard this and run with it. Yeah, then also, you know, the Maya Pay Brigade comes off the speech because I was like, wow, this is so elegant and, you know, wonderful and perfect and pure and righteous. And the rebellion cannot be that way. No political movement is without its idiots.

And I'm being a little, like it'd be really great to get to get a little Chuck Jones in here and really idiot idiot up. And then I had dinner while I was right. I had dinner while I was sketching that, a family dinner. And I was at one end of the table with my son and my niece's husband. And they both have like, you know, death metal hair. Everyone's drunk and whatever. And they are just like heckle and jekyll all night long.

And I went back to my desk in the stand. I was like, wow, man. So I wrote the two parts for them. That's my son. and my niece's husband, the two idiots of the Maya Pabrigan. But it came from wanting to take the piss out of the elegance of the beginning of it a little bit.

And also to legitimately, the rebellion cannot be noble all the time. Right. And you sort of alluded to the factionalism in the rebellion in the first season and I believe it's Luthen and Cassian are having that conversation. And there's a bunch of different.

So Lutthin and Saar having that conversation. Oh, that's right. And then there's, but there are a bunch of, different factions thrown around. And I loved that that came back and was useful again. Did you find yourself going, combing back through one, I'm sure at this point, it's a second language to you anyway, but like either seeing things in the first season that were unconsciously popping up in the writing of the second season or going back to the first season, literally they find little threads that

you wanted to continue up. It's both. I think when you're writing really, when you're writing well, you're leaving you're leaving little nuggets here and there that you may pick up or not pick up later on. I think if you have the whole show in your head, and that is our superpower that we know where we're going. We know where we're ending up. And I did know almost all the way through where we were going to go. So I think I was, you know, I put in a bunch of stuff in there. And I mentioned Maya Pay. I have no idea who Maya Pay is when I'm writing it. I have no idea what that is. It's the name. throw it in there and why not it sounds cool. And I don't know what a human cultist is. And maybe I'll come back and pick that up later on. And, you know, just, um, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's probably a lot, and there's a lot of breadcrums I left that I didn't pick up along the way, things that,

that could have been utilized later on. And, um, but it's, um, yeah, it's everything in the bag, every day. It's every club in the bag. Did, did you, oh, I'm trying to think of a golf metaphor. Chris is better at those than I am, but, um, oh, God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I start. I can't finish it. But I did wonder specifically, and we'll get into some more specifics in these episodes in a second, but like, did you feel that there was a different degree of difficulty in season two because of the scale and scope of the story you needed to cover? Because at least the first season was enormous and, you know, and has galaxy shaking consequences, but you built it in a more, you know, a traditional way in the sense that it's like the building of one rebel as he

joins the rebellion. As we join season two, the rebellion is in full flower and you have to, you have a lot of ground to cover in terms of making this the rebellion that I guess we see at the dawn of Rogue One and into the original trilogy. So did you consider a higher degree of difficulty or did it, was it the, or was it business as usual in terms of the creative construction?

Well, the free-floating death anxiety of every morning was gone. I mean, we've done the thing, I mean, literally. I mean, I wanted COVID to kill the show. I was eager. I was like, oh, thank God, COVID will kill the show.

have to do this. I mean, I was really, that whole first year until the, until the daily started coming in, until Johnny and I got a cutting room, a COVID cutting room down here and started, no, it was horrible. It was all gone. We know how to do it, so we have the confidence of that. Once the, once we had the structure of the three episodes per year and the specificity of, oh, we're doing this is going to come back for a couple days each time, one, two, three, one, two, three, Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, each time. Once we had that, it looks so sexy in the hotel room, you know, like, wow, look at that. And then I write away, I think probably the very first thing that I did. In fact, I know the very first thing I did was write the top and tail of each block for proof of concept.

Here's how it starts. This is how it can be done and this is how we get out. And this is where we are. And this is how we get out. Because I didn't want to go to, I don't want to start having conversation with people and like, oh, well, how are you going to do all that? I wanted to prove it. So I framed that up instantly. That was the very first job one. Does it work? Can you justify this? And then I think it's a lot easier to write about characters that are already established. It's a lot easier to when we had a system, we have all these people, you know who you can trust, you know that, you know, I know that who's going to deliver. I mean, we had to find directors. It's shopping for directors. There's a really complicated thing in television, as you know. It's really tough. It's really competitive.

That's really tough. But no, I think it was, on that level is easier. The money was really different. You know, the business model had changed, as you guys have discussed at length. And you were talking about it in Norway. I mean, like, you know, the mandate the first time around was, you know, it's Pearl Harbor, build battleships, build aircraft carriers. And then like, all of a sudden, it's it's 1945 and we don't need that anymore like what are you doing we're like well we're halfway done I mean so I mean that anxiety that was the new anxiety and and that was everybody and that was on that was on everybody and and that was uh you know Disney was sweating and Lucas was sweating and we were sweating and so that that was its own complication but the writing and construction no once I had the

top and tail you could go to the room and go hey look this does this can work I had a question about that building on what you'd already established because we have raved about and we'll continue to rave about the work of your production designer, Luke Hull, who I feel like his contributions to the show are so mind-blowing, but also expectation-shattering

for what production design ought to be or could be in television. And just even in these three episodes, what does he come up with? He has to populate five, six different worlds at any given moment. And in break rooms. Wait to you go to Gorman.

So I noticed that this season he is also an EP of the show. And I guess I wondered about your working strategy and belief in the consistency of a creative community. I mean, you mentioned a moment ago, your brother John, who's an editor, who is also, I think, an EP of the show. Your brother, Dan is in the writing staff and a producer. He's not a producer. Sorry, but I apologize to Dan. He's a drive-by.

He's on his own. He's got his own career, you know? If you want to give him like older brother Nugies now on this pod, that's fine. Honestly, Johnny and I get really irritated when he gets lumped him. Johnny was there for five years. He's a hostage in London. I mean, Danny's in Brentwood and, you know, but like, I can call him when I have a problem, but like, we have no sympathy for Dan. He's very expensive.

Honestly, Sam Gilroy is now lap Dan in our preferences for this podcast based on his performance. So just so you know. I think, yeah. Okay. So we know the hierarchy. But anyway, just about bringing in Dan aside, but like bringing in an empowering. the creative community that you had built for the season one and giving them, you know, more of a voice

and that you can rely on throughout. I mean, yeah, we just, I mean, I mean, Zana Wallenberg, you know, who's the mother of this show over there. I mean, you know, I think, when I think about it now, I think that we were both, the show was built by people who were employees for a long time. You know, we all were employees.

There's no Wunderkins on our show. You know, I didn't hit it till late, and Zana really got kicked around in TV. And we have a, we, a very much back of the house kind of attitude in ourselves. And so you try to design a work environment that you always fantasized about. And that's having everybody be a filmmaker and everybody be excited to work. And you're trying to get extra work out of people and you're trying to have people, you know, kill themselves for you. And you do that by empowering. I mean, giving people

credit is nothing. I mean, I don't know if that was a money thing or, I mean, how would you over-credit Luke on the show. What could you say? I mean, he should have a, he should have his own freaking title card. Johnny should. I mean, Zana should. Mo and Leo. I mean, and T.J., the, you know, the visual effects department. I mean, those core, that, that, those core for, I mean, you couldn't over-credit them. Tony, I want to talk a little bit about specifics in these three episodes, but I'll start with a somewhat general question, which is, um, the sensation that I got as we cut between these various storylines that you're very deptly setting up and pushing along and it's a lot, a lot of information is that even the visceral excitement that I had being back

with these characters and watching all of them, the thing that I just was blown away by and have already kind of jumped back and watch some of these episodes again is the depth that does not even really get fully acknowledged on the surface or it will be mentioned in passing, whether it's customs at a wedding or, you know, I made a joke about Kinderblock, but, you know, public education in the empire. There are some things I think people are going to take from these three episodes and be like, well, this is what we want to talk about, energy independence and stuff like that. But man, I mean, was there anything that you write and you're just like, holy shit,

you could just let me go forever on this wedding. You could let me go forever on what Dejra's childhood must have been like or whatever it was that that you almost like entertained yourself kind of dabbling in? I love writing Edie and, uh, I mean, every time he shows up, I'm very happy. This is, this is, uh, Cyril's mother played by the great Catherine Hunter. That scene is, yeah, no, I loved writing those scenes. I wanted that, I wanted a whole other episode of that scene. It, it couldn't be long enough ever for me. No, it's like, I'm, and it, it's funny how it dialed in because we didn't really dial it in. It was a real, like it was a real, that was a real

explore in season one, finding her voice. And Danny started it, because Danny's so great at those inside out, twisted, eccentric characters. So he started her, but it was, I can't remember what, what was missing. And then we started auditioning and then, you know, one of the weird things that we have to do, you probably experience is we have to write mock scenes. Anytime we audition anybody, we have 400 actors in the show. Anytime anybody comes in audition, they can't audition with the real pages. You can't issue real pages. So we have to make scenes for every audition piece. But you want to get an approximation of what's in there. You want to get the demands of the scene. So it was in the casting and the mock scenes. There was a guy named David Gervon. It was a script

that he took a couple pasts and he amalgamated Danny stuff. And then Catherine popped up on the thing. And I sort of, they all synthesized and I finally channeled her and I can do her. I love writing 80. I know. That's sick. Season two, to build on Chris's question about specifics, like we do learn things that I don't think we had ever learned about the Star Wars universe before. Like there are infomercials and tourism boards.

There are bodegas underneath apartment blocks where they sell spice tea. For literally us, I won't speak for the larger Star Wars fandom, but literally for me and for Chris, this is everything we've wanted, especially in a world without Jedi's, like detail, specificity, lives really lived. Did you have a different sense of confidence that you could create these things? I mean, I feel like we talked to you last season about like the bus lanes, you know, the bus routes. But you're adding these building blocks of a reality to a world that has been so defiantly fictive up to this point. We just got braver and we got better at it.

And, I mean, in the bodega, they go in and he looks for pisos. You know? It's like, I mean, and then they go later on. You'll see, pieces like, and there's more media. We have some really good media stuff coming. We just got braver and bolder. And, but, you know, the guiding principle is to be truthful. What would they do? They have to get food.

Where do they go? How does it work? Where does spice tea come from in your apartment building? I mean, all these things have to be answered if you're going to ask the question. And the answer is, you know, the terror that you're going to ask, have in the beginning. I mean, I think if you showed Luke and I, season two, and you went back to when we were starting out, we would, we would just, we'd be like, we'd be stunned. We never thought that we'd be able to pull off chorus on it. It was too complicated and too, we just,

we got braver and everybody got really good at it. You know, they all got really good. A Pinewood got really good at it. Tony, were Kyle, who plays Cyril and Denise who plays DeGro, were they as surprised as we were to find out about the romantic trajectory of these two characters? They weren't, they were along the way in season one. Denise was adamant when she came on. She was adamant. I don't want to have, don't be, I don't want to have a love story.

Oh my God, you're not going to give me some stupid love story. And she was really like, I was like, all right, well you, go ahead. Settle down. Run your mouth. No. Blame it on Dan. Yeah. You know, no, I was like, we'll see.

And, but by the time they got to the funeral and the whole thing, I think. and she and Kyle are they're so they're so amusing in in life together um yeah I don't uh yeah that was always I think from the moment he says I I want what you want to her when he's stalking her does that moment say I want what you want I feel it I know it I was like oh man he's he's all in this is he's such a romantic you know he's such a romantic character I uh I wanted to ask my my my version of asking about Kyle and Denise is this the Té character because

there's this mini Le Caree novel that happens over the course of this wedding. I thought just the construction of it being this three-day you know, space ketamine binge of these old yuppies and diplomats. And then this guy essentially being like

you must have got it confused. I'm not in this for, I'm not in this for ideology. I'm in this because, or at least he's looking around, right? TAY's looking around and saying everybody else got what they wanted and I'm screwed and now I'm also divorced by the way. His fall in these

three episodes and the way different characters start looking at him, there's so many moments where Ariel Klyman shoots it where it's Luthin's point of view stalking the two of them. Just talk to us a little bit about the wedding sequence that goes over the course of these episodes

and specifically what you were doing that character. When I decide it's going to be three days, I'm like, oh, my God, it's got to be a three-day wedding. Okay. So I was going to a lot of weddings at that point. A lot of, there were a lot of weddings to attend, so I was really inundated with weddings. But I said, okay, three days and it's Chandrala. And I knew I wanted to really put the pressure on her in that way.

And, you know, the best way to do is have him go full Fredo, you know, he's, he Fredo's out. He's, he's, he's not what you thought. And I went back and, you know, then you have to go back and look at season one and go, is it believable that the guy we saw on these other scenes. And, and, and Ben is such a great actor. There's so many colors and everything he's doing that when you go back, you look, you realize, oh my God, you know, he could be, he could be full of shit here, and he could be over his head here, and he could be weak here. And, and then the other truth is how many people, that you know around you who you thought were really had it together have you know every now and then somebody just is like in the parking lot and you're going what the hell happened i mean it happens and so it was it was very tricky to uh to execute that there was a lot of you know the actors had doubt everyone had to be really a lot of handholding to make to to get that through every everybody believe in it but i think it really uh and the and the cherry is to have sent to show back up you know here's the hit, here's the drive. Here's Luca Bratso.

Yeah. The entire time I was watching it, this was the plot line or this was the sort of element of these three episodes that really hammered home the year, the gap between the first season and the second, not in my viewing experience, but in these people's lives.

And I just started wondering, like, you know, this guy who's this really refined gentleman on the surface and now he can't hold his booze at a wedding. I loved that detail. I was like, of course this guy, his Achilles heel would be, he takes a couple too many champains on the first night. And now everybody at the wedding is talking about him.

It was just, I told me everything I needed to know about the social system of this, of this planet of this world that I, it was fantastic. It was like his parent and her. I love what, I mean, it was a nice scene, but what Ari did with the scene with Perrin and her in the morning is, that's a master class in blocking direction.

I mean, I have nothing to. to do with that. I could never have directed that scene like that. It's just, I remember when the Dailies came in and it's just so perfect. But it allows the two of them, it explains so much about their marriage too, like, you know, your fucking take home of who gives a shit, but like, wow, what a bad choice, you know? Yeah, I just love you have to be like your boyfriend, your boyfriend. Yeah, it's like, oh, God. And he might be a little jealous. Maybe he is a little jealous. It's, it's, yeah, no, it was, uh, yeah, Fredo. It comes from Fredo.

Speaking of Ben Miles, who gives a great performance, like one of the great joys of the first season was just seeing this absolute premier-tier buffet cart of English stage actors taking their turn in front of your cameras and playing these parts. And I know that you spoke before about your experience in the first season of being like, you've played violin for a while,

but now you have access to the Stradivarius factory. But, like, can you talk about the expansion of the cast in the season? And also, specifically, you know Ben Miles now, or you know, you know Genevieve O'Reilly and you know you can expect certain things from them and what freedom that gives you as a writer. No, totally. I mean, that's why, to go back to your earlier question,

those are the things that get vastly easier as you go along. You know, it's like doing, the first time I did a sequel, you're like, oh, my God, I don't have to introduce Jason Bourne. Everybody knows who he is already. Holy shit. I don't have to, all the energy that goes into trying to sneak attack info. None of that's there. But you do know.

And, and, and I don't, like, I'm trying to think if there's, even in my mind, not to name any names, is there anybody in there that I had to, like, like, be careful about anything? No, they all kind of could do anything that I wanted in a way. I mean, Diego's accent I have to worry about. Stellan's accent I have to worry about. You know, those are things that are in there. Those are little guardrails. but like these people could do anything.

And I don't know if they all just made each other better or the directors were just so incredibly gifted. And it's on the page. But still, no, I was, it was very exciting to stand in the podium and wave a baton at this. It really was. It's fun seeing like you have, you know, you have Anton Lesser on the show playing this part so perfectly.

And it's kind of like being like, oh, see what I have in the fridge and whip something up and you have caviar in the fridge. Yeah. Wait, you just wait. Just wait. Oh my God, just wait. What some of these people do, how far they go.

And they also, I think they all, I think they all smelled the opportunity and they knew that we weren't going to let them down, you know, that the script was not going to let them down. They were going to go someplace. And, you know, they all want to know what's going to happen to them, all that kind of stuff. And we didn't hide anything. So we didn't, it wasn't the kind of show where it's like, oh, you have to wait until next. Just you wait. Yeah, no, I remember watching the David Chase and the panel's thing, and I thought, God, this is so horrible.

Every week, everybody's got to, like, wait and see the scripts to see if they're alive or not. I'm like, oh, what a, what a, I mean, interesting vibe. It clearly worked for them. Whatever they were doing was working, but we didn't do it that way. Everybody knew what they were getting. That's called the Palpatine method, and some showrunners do it. I guess so. Oh, God.

So. I want to ask you a little bit about the return of Krenick, but also your comfort in conference rooms. as a writer. That obviously was a real highlight of these first three episodes, not only because I love Mendelsohn's so much, but also just this working group of people who are not allowed to tell their bosses what they're doing and what there's like a disinformation expert team. And then clearly the entire time. Was that what they were called? That's actually in canon. I remember calling Pablo and going like, what do I call it? Like who's going to be? He goes, oh, it's called the Ministry of Enlightenment.

Yeah. Are you ever when you call Pablo for something? Are you like, are you kidding me? You guys had that? There's a couple of things I won't say. There's a couple of things I've asked that you would thought they would have had answers for. And he goes, that has never been properly dealt with. No one has ever asked.

There's a couple of things that are enormous that people will run out of leave. Where do they buy the spice tea? Yeah. Does Sater get his tea at the same place? Or does he have his own guy? No, but, yeah. So Ben comes back. He's obviously for people.

people who treasure Rogue One, like Andy and I, like very memorable character. What was, I guess tell me a little bit about bringing him back on the show and especially that scene with him sort of running herd over this group of military, industrial bureaucrats and imperial officers. Well, bringing back legacy characters is complicated. It's complicated economically. It's complicated ego-wise. It's complicated in a whole bunch of ways.

And then even if you, and then you have to consolidate your work. If I even put them in one scene in the show, you have to pay them for full freight. You know, it's like a whole, so you want to get the most out of it when you do it. Reached out to Ben and he loves his character and we've had a great time and we had a great time on Rogue. And he's a mad co-conspirator. And so he was a game for it. The scene at the top was really my eagerness to do the Vancey convention. you know, I really, I've been obsessed with the Vancey convention.

It just fascinates me. Every time it's on, there's like three versions of it. Every time it's on TV, I watch, I just can't stop watching. You know, I even know what it is. It's the PowerPoint meeting that the Nazis had to basically sort of game out over a long lunch, the final solution. Yeah. Literally, the mechanics of how to kill six million people in a, in a, in a, in a, in a,

you know, outside Berlin. And they kept incredibly strict notes about it. So they have the whole thing as detailed. That's the Frank Pearson did a film. Frank Pearson, yeah. There's also a German version and there's another, there's three altogether. But Frank Pierce is one with Stanley Tucci and, yeah.

And so I was like, I'm doing the Vancey convention and we'll do it for Gorman. And so that's where my starting point was. You don't have to, you don't have to work very hard to make Ben Brewera. you know, you've got to really be careful about that. And he's just all game. He's loved to put that cape on. And he just loves to be, he loves to have a captive audience in the room too.

Speaking of things that, you know, may have inspired you from our world, from our galaxy. Energy independence. Energy independence, something that we're passionate about. Taxation, you know. No, but the season picks up the story of Cassian's found family. and they are now living on the outer rim, and they are working as undocumented farm workers,

which is something that exists in our world. And in the time that since you wrote the season and filmed the season has become more of a pressing political issue. And I wondered about your journey from being inspired by the world that you live in and bringing it to the galaxy far, far away. And then as a follow-up, your experience watching the two worlds maybe get a little bit closer to each other during the time since you lock picture.

Well, I can answer the second one. I mean, that'll be revealed to us in the next couple months. I don't know. The show will speak for itself. There's nothing I can do about that. It certainly wasn't intentional. I wasn't writing with a newspaper. I mean, the issue of papers and refugees and the rest of it is, I mean, one of my favorite novels ever,

the idea of the novel is like Arch of Triumph. I don't know if you know where he's like a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a German surgeon who's falling out with the Nazis and it's early. They haven't invaded Paris yet and he's in Paris and he's an eminent surgeon, but he's on the run. He was in a concentration camp for all and he has no papers at all. And so he performs shadow operations for other surgeons. Is this army of shadow, did they base army of shadows off this?

No, no. No, that's not in there. No, no. So other surgeons put the patient to bed and then he does the operation and they give him like 12% of what they make. And that's his shadow life he's living. And like all about papers. I mean, I'm just using that as one example of a million.

I mean, everybody's always been looking for documentation. Immigration has always been an issue. The people, any, I'm trying to be timeless. I mean, it's part of, I know it sounds like media training, but I am trying to be timeless. I'm not bullshitting. I wasn't watching the newspaper saying, I got to do this.

No, I mean, just as a point of comparison, like Chris and I love the novels of Ellen First, who writes obsessively about World War II, and the prevailing thing in his books isn't the guns of warks there. He's in Paris. It's documentation. Documentation.

It's passage. It's existence. Stephen's Weig. Everybody. I mean, people are just talking. Yeah, exactly. Look, well, anyway, there's a, there's a little homage later on. There's a, there's a nom de plume that Diego takes.

That's a, that's a little tip of the hat to one of those, one of the people who was a big facilitator in World War II. But, no, I was, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. I mean, the show was originally intended. to be released much earlier. Obviously, the strike held us up, and then skeleton crew, we got pushed back.

So, I mean, the timing of how things timed, but there's nothing I can do about that. I don't know, we'll see what happens. But there's something about the durability of what you're writing, and I think obviously just given some of the references you've just made, not only about these stories are not new.

They're not unique to our time, but also I think that it seems like the, not even the research, but your own tastes have informed this show to the point where, you know, this is a lifetime of work coming out in this series, even though for a lot of people watching it, they're like, well, okay, how do we get to the Death Star, though, you know? No, but I mean, I mean, all the time I spent reading about Oliver Cromwell,

all the time I spent reading about, you know, Tucson Louvertour, all the time I spent reading about Mao, or reading Manam Began's Revolt, or pick your revolutionary terrorist, whatever, pick them. I've wasted an incredible time on the Russian Revolution and all this crap. And like, when would I ever have a chance to get, you know, to get the greatest hits in here and get them in organically? So whenever it pops up, yeah, I think it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. But it's not me being coy and saying, oh, I've, you know, I had this agenda. It's really me using the things that I've always interested me.

Honestly, like we've spoken with people who were working on and writing Veep at the time. We've spoken with Jesse Armstrong about writing succession and that for as timely as those series seem, you kind of have to operate with a little bit of like blinders on because you can't, you can't outdo real life. You basically have to root yourself in these sort of like, what are like these proven patterns that we have out there? Well, the digestive process of it is so long anyway. By the time something gets to the screen, it's, it's, it's origins are five, six years earlier. So what is what is what is what is what is what is what is the core sample of? you started or where you ended up, you know, what's the relevant? So I don't know, I will,

I will be buffeted by that issue for the next six weeks, but I really, I'm not, I'm, I, I really, I'm being legit. It really was not reading this with a newspaper. I was not writing this with a newspaper. No, we didn't expect, I mean, nor did we think that you were. I think that one of the things. But people do, well, that, you do those podcasts later then. Yeah. I'm going to France next week. Oh, good luck. Are you coming back? I'll see you. That's a better question. No, I think that what we continue to be inspired by is what you just said, that you're using

the whole toolbox of things that you've been thinking about and concerned with and fascinated by, but that also, what I also find inspiring from a writing perspective is the problem solving within an existing structure. Not just, I mean, we can joke about like what cereal do they eat, but also like, no, really, what were they fighting for? What was the trickle-down effect? Where were they when these things happened and what did it feel like? And did any of them?

and I just want to make, we were steering towards an end point, but like, did any of them think about concepts like Joy, like Perrin brings up in these episodes? Like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the picture, filling out the portrait in a way that comes through in every frame of the show, I think is really, really exciting and satisfying. Cool. I mean, that's a question, though. Okay. Um, do you agree? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I agree. All right, how about this for a question? Let's test your media training before we let you go. We've only watched three. The listeners have only watched three. There are nine remaining. Tony Gilroy, what are you excited about people discovering over the next?

He can't answer that. I know, but I guess, you know, but media training involves teasing, you know, getting people to watch and keep tuned to live. No, no, no. I should never have said that. I think it's really weird how when you go out and sell something that you've made, you find out why you did it. I have had that's been a universal experience. And maybe it's because I work inside out and I work small and the first experience I had with that was Clayton I really was like I was stumbling out on the on junket tour and I'm like like a couple weeks in I'm like oh my god why this is why I did it this is what this movie is really about I you know all the stuff you do intuitively and instinctively and from your gut and just feels right and um and um this is sort of that writ large

and I think that uh what I'm learning in the past two months and what I've learned more intensively in the past couple weeks is that I'm maybe more of a moralist than I had anticipated, you know, like I see patterns that go back. And I think that my, the values, I want people to, it sounds so fucking corny, but like there should be hope. The integrity that a lot of these people keep through the show, through the sacrifices and the punishment that we put them through, where they end up at the end was really emotionally powerful to all of us, like in the mixing stage when we got there at the end, we're like, oh, my God, holy shit. What time does to people who've made serious choices, how it hurts, how it, how it, and in the end, you know, the value of

community. I think so much of this is about the disruption and destruction of community. I mean, you see it in Ferris, you see it in Eldonnie. You'll see it in, obviously, in Gorman. you see it, I mean, everywhere. And the carelessness and the cruelty that goes into the destruction of community, I think, is something that while I'm demonstrating it, I'm also hopefully lifting it up and saying how much it matters to me and how much I really think this is a value and how much forgotten it is more than any other political message.

And so, I don't know, that's kind of a corn-pone answer. No, it's not. It's not, but it's so fascinating to hear you talk about. about you start learning about what you did when you start talking about it. But I'm sure for you, just as these three episodes are examples of, is a lot of it is like, all right, what happens if we have assault on Precinct 13 and this guy is stuck in one spaceship and the other guys are in the other spaceship, but there's no food.

What do we do here? Exactly. Most of the time you're dealing, all the time, you're dealing with the stupid, like, I've answered this question. So I'm repeating myself because everybody, you know, these monologues, a monologues, a monologues, and it's kind of like guitar shredding. You know, it's like, okay, fuck, yeah, I can shred. But they have no idea, like, the hard work that goes into, like, backing up a good song

and just staying out of the way and helping the arrangement and getting, how do I get these two people to be in a room together to have a fucking scene? Like, that is so hard sometimes. Like, why are they there? How do I get them to communicate? How do I get this to, like, stupid shit that people never think about is really. really like that's the serious carpentry of building a plot that works that long and hard and properly. And like, it doesn't get any credit. And a lot of, you know, and you don't even

want to think about it when you're done with it. You know how it is. It's like, I did that. I don't want to think about it anymore. Like, it's not. It's clean. This works. I don't want to Yeah, but you drop details in there where it's like she needs a 12 minute head start. Like you put all this stuff in there that I'm like, wait a second. I'm trying to think of an example though. like oh i don't know but you know the uh well there's things i can't talk about we can talk about later on you'll see some things where i where a couple things really uh yeah a lot of things happen in four that will go all the way through so we can talk later on about that all right well we'll definitely have you back on for the finale it's like moving a tiefighter with ropes just a couple centimeters

at a time but eventually oh my god isn't it stupid i know it's like i love oh they're such idiots I love the Maya Pay Brigade. Well, that'll be the next prequel, right? Yeah, exactly. Days of Maya. Tony, it's been... It's been amazing. No, the days and nights of Maya Pay.

The nights are more interesting. Yeah, I think Cinemax may have to come back for that one. It's awesome to have this show back in our lives. We've been waiting years. It's everything that we've wanted it to be. Greenwald, any closing thoughts? No, I just, we're excited for the next few weeks, and we're excited you're going to come back and talk to us at the end.

I like how you're doing it too. I think this is a wise way to do it. I think it's cool that you can want. Are you going to be blown out by having to do three every week? That's what I was worried about. I think that I enjoy it in the chapters kind of that they're in, like or in the parts of the book that they're in. Yeah, it's not really organized that way.

It's more articulated that way. It'll feel proper. But it's just so much work for people. All these podcasters, it's like, oh, my God. Pity the poor podcaster. Like, do we appreciate that. It's a big part of the business now. I don't see a lot of podcast representation in the Andor universe.

That was going to be my one complaint. We don't have a podcast. That would be, I wish we'd done that. I should have done that. You could have called us. Season 3. Oh, my God. Well, you'll see a couple of things that will amuse you along the way, though.

That's all we want. All right, chance. Enjoy the press tour. We'll see you in a couple weeks. Thank you. See you later. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save.

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