The Watch - Tony Gilroy on the Final Three Episodes of ‘Andor’ Season 2

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Chris and Andy are joined by ‘Andor’ creator Tony Gilroy to talk about the final three Episodes of Season 2. They discuss what these last three episodes meant to Gilroy emotionally and thematically (2:01), where Bix and Cassian’s relationship ended up at the end of this season (26:51), and how he balanced the emotional story lines with the large action set pieces (50:43). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Tony Gilroy 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'm an editor at the ringer.com. And I'm about to be joined in the studio by Andy Greenwald. Andor creator, Tony Gilroy, will be on the other line. We're going to talk to Tony about the last three episodes of the second season of Andor. So obviously, this is a spoilerific conversation.

I would recommend you finish Andor and then fire this interview up. Tony talks about things that happen in the last three episodes, things that happen over the last two seasons, the entire process of coming to the Star Wars, World and working in it for these years. And it's an awesome conversation. Honestly, Tony is one of our favorite guests to have on the show. And to get to get this insight into Andor over the last couple of years, these last two seasons has been so, so awesome. So I hope that you enjoy this interview with Tony Gilroy. It's our entire episode for this Tuesday. And we'll be back on Thursday

to talk a little bit more in depth about the end of Andor and some other shows. Everybody enjoy this interview with Tony Gilroy. Andy and I are so honored to have Tony Gilroy back on the watch to talk about season two of Andor, which just aired its final three episodes of the series. Tony, first of all, man, I guess we've probably said this in various ways over the last couple of times we've talked. But what an astonishing accomplishment. And thank you. Honestly, thank you for making this show. I wanted to start, since we have you here with these last three episodes, I was watching and, you know, obviously you're processing so much. narrative while it's happening. And as I rewatch them, it really struck me how much maybe the theme of these last three was about the children of Luthan, you know, and these Cassian and Clea and Vell

kind of coming to terms with their experiences with Luton and what he taught them, but also what he didn't teach them and what they had to learn for themselves. And I would just want to see if you could talk to me a little bit about for you emotionally and thematically what these last three episodes were to you and what you were trying to communicate? I'm not sure I was entirely in charge of what I think has emerged. I mean, we talked about that last time about how much of the showmaking and how much of the process is a surprise to me in the end in a weird way, you know, that the larger things reveal themselves.

I think we were all, as we went to mix, as we went to finish, we were all just, all the people that have been communally part of that process for the last five years at the end of the line, time, you know, really what time and, and you're right, there is a communal father, daughter, father, father, son, father, absent father, element to it. But it's, it's, it's bigger than that to me. It's really those five women that end up at the end, the survivors at the end, I wasn't prepared for, I didn't start off going, well, I'm going to have these five chess pieces left at the end of the game. And it's going to be so groovy because we will have, we'll have really put them through their paces. I was surprised to see how I felt at the end

to have them all there and all the, just the detail work. I was talking to Dan, yesterday, my brother, because he's out doing some interviews and doing some press for us. And so many people have deep feelings about the show and they're saying all the things that you want to have them say. And some of them are so big. And the way you build it is so small and practical along the way. And we were just marveling at our own lack of perspective as we went along and, you know, we just just kept hammering all the way. And in the end, you end up with this other thing. I'm not sure, that's a really crappy answer to a really interesting question. I think the breakaway from Luton is very much a big part of the show, obviously for these

characters. And I think it's also, if you're talking about the revolutionary aspect and how revolutions come together and how coalitions come together, I think the show is more successful than I had anticipated at talking about how different. difficult that is to do and what happens to the originators often in any kind of a movement or any kind of a show or any kind of project. What happens to the originators? I think that one of the things that shocked me about the finale, Tony, was like I knew you'd, you've been saying in interviews for the beginning now for years that the brief was to get a character from, in this case, childhood to the beginning of Rogue One. I don't think I believed you until I watched these last two episodes to realize

how specifically you walked him right up to the beginning of that movie. Could you talk a little bit more about how the moments you were just describing, having these emotional chess pieces in play, how that emerged to you over the course of writing? Like when you were plotting and breaking season two, you knew what happens to Cassine at the end of the season. But how did the rest of the story emerge so that even when you were getting into production, you knew you would have a satisfying crescendo?

Well, the shoreline of the show, I could have, of all the things that I could not anticipate and all the things that emerged along the way, the one thing that never would have surprised me is the final montage of the show. I mean, that was kind of always, I think if you asked Danny or Johnny or Bo or Donna or any of us along the way, we would have probably given you a pretty accurate description of what the final moments of the show. Not the very final moment of the show, but that walk to the ship, that was always, let's have him walk to the ship. I bet it's going to end up, you know, if we can avoid having it be in slow motion, that would be great. I'm sure it'll have a montage of who's ever left and, you know, or whoever we can

afford to pay for that episode if we're bringing people in and how many, how much attendance can we take. I think everybody, we had that from minute one. I think we own that from the very beginning. And I think Diego is the first person who put their finger on it. We're out on the first junket describing the fact that what made the show possible. And at that point, we knew what we were going to start to do for the second season was that we knew where we were going. We've always known where we were going. We were going for that final bit. And that's half the answer. What was the other, what was the first half of the question? I guess about the other emotional moments that as they emerged to sort of fill in the blanks that you alluded to in your answer to Chris?

I mean, I felt so deeply about so many of these people. I mean, you know, I remember thinking about Anton Lesser while we were shooting the first season and I'm like, oh my God, this guy is just such a rock for me and he's just so important. And, you know, he's talking about the writer's best friend. I mean, if someone did a supercut of all his scenes and you watch all the exposition that he's laying down without anybody knowing it, it's pretty, it's pretty masterful. I think his, Tony, his, when he says bad luck, Gorman, I don't know if that was the first take, if that was the only take, that's one of the best line deliveries in the history of the show. He doesn't need much. He's, he's kind of just Adwater, performer, performer, per actor, artist.

But I was like, wow, this, I got a, I hadn't thought about where I was going to end up with him. And I thought, boy, he really needs, he needs a, he needs a. He needs a full stage to himself to do this. And I was so happy to be able to combine him with Alex Lothar and be able to do that. That was really one of the happier moments of discovery. But yeah, if you're sensing, I'm a bit overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed at the response, but I've been overwhelmed. I'm resurrecting my feelings from the fall when we finished the show.

I'm being overwhelmed by never have a lot of. worked on something that's this long or big, usually a movie, you work on it for a year and a half, you know, you, you, it's a, it's a, it's a pretty familiar, um, time frame. It's something you get used to after, you know, it's like being a Central Park horse or something. You know how to go, you know, you like, you know exactly where to go, exactly how it's going to feel. This was so different, um, um, in every way, um, that I, I'm sure, you know, David Kelly or, you know, John Wells or the people who've done this for millions of time. I'm sure they're very experienced in the tempo of this.

I'm not. And so I was I'm unprepared for, I was unprepared for how I felt when we finished. And I'm, you know, I'm unprepared for the reaction to the show as well. It's a bit overwhelming. So you're catching me, you know, last day of COVID and a bit blown back by many things. So I try not to cry, but, you know. Yeah. Jalen Brunson leading a revolution to visit.

I know. Jaylen Brunson. What a great Star Wars name, too. It's great that you brought up Anton Lesser because as I was re-watching the last few episodes, my favorite thing to do right now is, you know, you have to do this first pass on these episodes, and you've got to get the plot and you've got to get the moments. And then you go back and there are these in-between scenes that are just mind-blowing. And one was the really stood out to me is after Clea is in the wind, the Partigaz Crennick scene. and when Krenick says, I can't protect you, Leo.

The reason it jumped out at me was there's this whole thread of their relationship in that one line that I don't think is explicitly referenced anywhere else in the series. And it's one thing to have characters with back stories,

but it's another thing to have back relationships or back cross stories. And I just have to tip my cap to you, but also ask, like, those guys must have come up together. Yeah, no, great call. Great call.

No, I mean, absolutely great call. Totally. It tells you, it tells you, yeah, I don't, I certainly never went back and did a, well, those guys don't need a resume anyway, but I mean, I'm assuming they went to the Naval Academy together, or they were in, they were in the ISB, you know, torture, tutorial or whatever the, whatever the, yeah. Torture prep school. Yeah, they were all in there together. They have a relationship. It's so that one, those are the kinds of things. It's like there are, I've learned that now over time, how effective, um, an accurate, uh, little jab like that can be. You identified it last time. You know, I mean, Denise Goff's backstory. I, you know, I was raised in a, I was raised in Imperial Kinderblock. I mean, she doesn't say much, but it gets the whole job done. And yeah, and just to say Leo and just the way he says it and Ben understood exactly.

what it was. Yeah, they've been through everything together. And I'm sure there's different times where Partagos has been the alpha in that relationship as well. Following up on that, I just wondered about, this is going to sound very broad, but as a writer, your relationship with negative space. Yeah. I was thinking about it in terms of Clea, who really emerges this season as a hero in her own right, and then in these last few episodes, as one of the most crucial characters in the series, she is sort of just hiding in plain sight for so much of it, both for the ISB and for the audience. And obviously a lot of your decision-making hinged on Elizabeth Doolow being secretly,

like a lot of these actors, absolutely astounding. But when you're confronted with a character like that and the opportunity to show a little bit more, as you do in episode, I mix him up at 10, do you feel hindered by the lack of real estate, or do you feel inspired by the lack of real estate? And how do you go about deciding, as you just did with that, you know, I can't protect you, Leo line.

How do you go about deciding what is the right amount to give? I, there's a meta answer to that too. I mean, I've spent my entire life as a screenwriter since I was, I don't know, since I first started trying to do it when I was, what, 25? And you know this feeling. Your eye is always up in the right hand corner, man. My eye is always in that right-hand corner. That number up there is just a, it's a very stern,

it's a very stern master that number up there. And, you know, I have relationships with all different kinds of numbers in the right-hand corner, you know, like, oh, man, I'm on 35. I'm already here. Fantastic. Everything's great. I don't think I ever on a movie script. I don't think of the, I don't even know how many scripts I've done.

I don't think there's ever been a case. where I didn't get to page 85 and have a complete panic attack. Ever, ever, ever, ever. Oh, my God, it's 85. I only have 30 pages left. I'll never get it in there. It's so stern that that limited real estate that you have. I've never on this show felt limited at all.

felt of all the other pressures that come on the show and running the show and all the other things that come on and the relentless pace of building the show for years. And it's literally a dairy farm. You have to, cows have to be milk twice a day no matter what. But what are the breaks? You don't have to reintroduce all the characters that you've already got up and running. And you don't have to, I almost never worry about what's up there. I can't tell you how long all of our various episodes are. I never really pay attention to it. So I've been, I've never, I've never been restricted by that. The negative space is obviously something that has been a real dominant narrative tool here. It's been a real experiment. It's really exciting for me and I think for Danny and Bo and Tom and I think to be able to

play with new narrative toys, time and negative space of a really unusual, experiment in this show. So it was very exciting to do it, but I never felt restricted by it. If anything, I think it helped me become more direct and more accurate. The idea of time in this series, the idea of taking these year later,

and these are the three big days of that year, allows you to have a thriller inside of a sweeping epic every three hours, right? When you're writing to those kind of genre beats inside of something that's Lawrence of Arabia or Dr. Chavago or Grab Your David Lean movie, are you having to change gears on the transmission

to be like, okay, I know you just said you're looking at that page, you're not looking at that page number, you're not looking at how long these episodes are, but across those three episodes, are you like, all right, now we want to have Stormtroopers amassing outside of Clea's safe house or whatever. Like this, there's a ramp up to the sort of genre elements of it. No, I think it's, I mean, there's some element of luck in this.

And as we discussed before, and as we spent so much time talking, as we were I selling the show about the moment where Diego and I realized we couldn't do five seasons. And then I literally remember going up, back up to the, you said, oh, my God, we have four years and four blocks. And I remember the hotel room in Pitlockery and this really wonderful little funky little hotel up in Scotland and the little, you know, I make a desk everywhere I go and all these hotel rooms and my little, and going back up there and thinking about that as an experiment and thinking, oh my God, I got to come back for the first time I come back is it's got to be the wedding.

Am I going to do the wedding and then go for a month and how long am I? And I was like, no, no. And let's do the three days of the wedding. And I thought, well, that'll work for this one. It can't possibly work for the other three. But then by luck, they all, like, wow, you can just sort of do the most intense three days of that year. And it won't feel manipulative to have everybody around the galaxy. I don't think people will feel it's a coincidence that you're putting them all in these intense three days. And then once they're sort of structured what's supposed to happen, the real deep drop is to go, oh, my God, this will accelerate.

This will, I can absolutely, we can write the way we normally write, and this will accelerate any, any, any inertia that might be gathered by the gaps, you know what I mean? Yeah. So no, you just go full bore. let's just write this full. We're writing full out for those three days like we normally would. But it was another unintended or unexpected get that it just drives it forward. So you're just, bam, let's go to the next one.

Bam, let's go to the next one. I wish I could say that I was just so prescient that I knew that this would all happen this way. But I was not. You mentioned Diego there. And I have a two-part question related to him and his involvement of the show. it's funny about how you succeeded so broadly here that sometimes our attention is drawn from the main character whose name is on all the posters.

But before I talk about the character, I did want to ask you about your relationship with Diego as a partner in this, because obviously he came with the house. And you had a tenant, and he's an executive producer on it. And I wondered if you could speak a little bit more about that creative partnership off-screen

before I asked you a few questions about his performance this season on-screen. I mean, I really can't get into Rogue. I don't really really want to talk about Rogue, but we got very close on Rogue, and he was one of the, you know, what can I say that's safe. Everybody wasn't, not everybody was happy I was there on Rogue and doing what we were doing, you know. It was difficult for some people. For him, it was a salvation. So we always really got along.

I got to know him on that show. he's just a wonderful guy. He's just a great hang. And I mean, he's one of those people that it's like Clooney or Clive Owen. The person that you think you know, that is, that's the guy. Like there's no, there's no hidden game. He's just a wonderful, generous, really intelligent, emotionally intelligent human being. And he's also a complete circus person.

He's grown up in the theater from precognition. His father is one of the great stage designer and production designer of Mexican theater. And he just grew up in the theater. I mean, he's just part of it from the very beginning. And what he doesn't know is not worth knowing. It's really true. And he understands all of the responsibility

that comes with being with number one on the call sheet. And so when they said they wanted to do a show with him, I go, okay, well, that's interesting. And then if you're going to marry up with somebody, boy, there's somebody that you could really be a partner with for, you know, five years or however long we thought we were going to be doing it. And honest to God, over this entire experience, and we were in Japan, before we came home, we had a very emotional sort of dinner with everybody there who was there before we left and split apart. I have never had a disagreement with him. I have never had a harsh word with him.

I can't think of another relationship that I have of any substance where that is the case. But he is a true gentleman. He has, we haven't had spent a lot of time dissecting scripts or worrying about, you know, plot points or many things. He's been very helpful with casting, obviously. and very informative about what's going on on the set. He's a good representative for me there because I'm not there. He's an incredible monitor of the narrative flow of the story. And what happens is because we shoot out a sequence

and because these are such long stories and three different directors, you know, the directors oftentimes, as hard as they try to get their head around, they can't keep the whole show in their head. It would be, they'd actually not be doing their job if they did that, but someone there has to be keeping the whole show in their head. So the characters, the primary actors, the primary actors, become deputized to make sure that everything's being honest. He's done a miraculous job of that.

And when we need support, he speaks up. I just making it easy, man. You know, the people that make it easier where it's at, making your job look easy is really, that's the real benchmark. And he just makes it look easy. And also, last thing. not, A, realizing that he's not going to be in every scene, that it's going to be a chorus, that he's going to share all these things,

that not only is that all going to accrue to him, but it also means he gets days off. That's smart. You know, honest to God, you know, episode 10 we're talking about, he's not in episode 10. You know, I got, and he's, tears, I never heard one, I never heard anybody say, gee, you know, do you think you could sneak him in?

in here, he's feeling lonely, or he needs a dog so people like him, or I've never heard one silly actor thing from him. It's such a generous and unselfish performance. I wondered if you could, on the flip side of that, talk about the character of Andor, because obviously it's the name of the show. But throughout, if you track the character's words, he's repeatedly and consistently dismissive of his own abilities. I think at one point he says he's just lucky. As the writer of the series, what do you thing makes him special? Or is his ordinariness key to the show's opinion on what heroism

actually is? I mean, we're, I'm tiptoeing to destiny, as you can see in the second season, you know? I mean, I really am. I mean, I'm not saying he's Star Wars Jesus or something, but he takes on messianic qualities towards him. Totally.

Yeah. Totally. And this, and and, and the scene that was really important to me that was a surprise was was the scene with Luton and he at the back of the Senate where even Luton is just like, man, who are you? Like you talk about the most rational, least mystical character in the show,

probably the last person who'd want to spend a minute with a force healer. And Luton is just bedazzled by when he starts to put it together. Who are you? All the things that you've been through, all the things you've lived through. They never get to finish that conversation, which is cool, because I don't know where that goes.

without getting Dewey. But he, reluctant, reluctant destiny, or as Bill Gohmins used to say, stupid courage, you know, that is such a compelling, that is such a compelling character trait. It's, and he just, he just, he just wore it like one of those jackets, you know, like one of those, one of those groovy jackets. It's just, he pulls that, he pulls the weight of that on,

so easily. It's interesting that you bring up that scene between Lutheran and Cassian because one of my sort of favorite aspects of watching the second season beginning, we talked with you about

the scene with Cassian and Naya, I believe in the Imperial Base, and he's like, you're coming home to yourself. This is why I do what I'm doing. You know, like this is this great adventure you're about to embark on all the way through some of the conversations that, you know,

Clea has with Cassian and Vell and at Yavin, like at the end, is you can always get this, there's this little thing in the back of my mind where I'm wondering if these characters are running agents, even when they are connecting on an emotional level or perhaps revealing something of themselves to get something from the person they're talking to, is I still wonder, are you running this person?

Are you, you know, even Vell, who comes and says, Mon wants me to ask you what you found out there to verify it. And she's so I'm giving you something here. I'm here on a mission, but that doesn't mean I don't want to know. Val has a very, I mean,

she does it a couple times. She won't play the game the way they want to do. She always tells everybody exactly what she's there for, if you notice. I love that, that she does that. I don't, I think there probably is a switch that,

that we're going off when we're making a scene, not really spoken out loud, but I think which one of those two modes are we in? I think that the Luthin scene for me with he at the back of the Senate is honest. I don't think he's playing him at all. I think, and that's a moment where I wasn't directing it. I don't know what the conversation was like

with the actors at that point or what Stellen, He Stelan doesn't like a lot of information, to be honest with you. He doesn't really, he's pretty much a self-reliant actor. I'm not sure what the conversation was, but if I had been directing the scene, if I had been there and there was a problem or there was a question, I would have said, man, you're not, this is legit. You're legit here.

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18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for, that's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back. Getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines.

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strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring, save at Whole Foods Market. Now if the series is over, I want to ask you your take on the Bix and Cassian relationship because there's a beauty to it, there's a romance to it, there's a sadness to it, but there's also a core of practicality and realism to it and her decision-making. And I wondered how you considered it and the arc of it. Is it, is it, is it, romance? Is it emotional support clinging because they've known each other their whole lives? Did she know something about him ultimately that you feel he didn't know? I'm just curious,

just now that you, now that it's in the rear view, how you considered that romance as you moved through it, that relationship. I think they were each other's first kiss. I mean, I think they were, you know, I mean, he says in the very beginning, there's a scene where he comes back, and you remember why he just sneak over the wall and your father caught me, you know, in the yard in Ferricks. I think they've, I mean, obviously they were two very good looking kids in Ferrics, right? And I'm sure they found each other pretty quick. And I mean, so I think they've, I don't know exactly what Soulmates means, but I mean, I think there's, my wife, Susan's heard me say this a million times before. There's different kinds of marriages. There's marriages where you meet after

you're already who you are and there's marriages where you grow up together, you know. And my wife and I have grown up together. I think it's a hard way to go. It has unbelievable, it has unbelievable benefits in the end. There's no one else who knows you, you know. There's no one else who knows all the stories. There's no one else who is, is, gets all the references and understands every, the provenance of every single thing about your life. That's the kind of relationship I think they have. I think I think it's beautiful. I think it's able to endure, you know,

all the side, all the side romances and side problems that they've had, all the Tims and all the, and all the Wendy's that they've had over the years. You know, they really belong together. That is, it's the utilitarian version of Soulmate, right? And I do think,

I think he knows, when they are at the force healer and that stuff is happening, I think he's already felt and worried on some of the things that are being said there. In many ways, and I don't, I'm not trying to be, I don't mean this in any sexist way at all, but I think more women are more spiritually tropic than men are typically, you know, in relationships anyway, in my experience. you know, the first person who's going to go to the astrologist

or the first person is going to say, you know, I think we should really, I think we should try this is more often than not. It's probably a bit of a stereotype. But she's, she is playing that part and she's freer in a way. She's more open to the idea

and she has dreamt. She started dreaming about him before. She dreamt about him when she was in the prison in the hotel. She's seeing it, and she's less afraid of it than he is. I think in the end, he can't, you know,

I mean, he looks at that force healer, doesn't he, on the way to the ship? Yeah. On the walk out, she's there. He knows it. He feels it. I enjoyed just as a personal exercise, and I'm sure it was, to some extent,

the intention within the writer's room and when you're mapping it out, the twinning of characters, or basically plotting people along parallel paths. That is never more clear than in the final moments between Cyril and Cassian, who have crossed galaxies to find each other finally in this brazzary.

And Cyril's plot and his arc is one of the more original things I think I've seen, certainly in a Star Wars story, but in any kind of TV show where you're so invested in such a, God, fucking an unlikable guy, but you can't help

but feel everything fall apart for him in those last few scenes that he's alive, including the ultimate insult of who are you? And I was just wondering broadly if you could talk about Kyle and that plot, you know, Gorman is obviously, when we're recording this, everybody has got Gorman on the mind because of the episodes that have just aired.

But I just couldn't get over the way his character ended. And just the Wizard of Oz aspect of the way you introduced him is one of the most memorable introductions of any character in recent memory, adjusting his own uniform. The arc towards this end of the ultimate insult, despite everything, despite trying to be seen, despite trying to have a little flare, no one knows who he is. there's not even a question I just had to say it no I man I feel it it's Greek

you know you really you really want to get there now I think we're the great beneficiaries in the show again of lucky casting

I mean Kyle I just cast in the room I think he was the second person who came in to Nina this is just pre-COVID

and he came in and and he he did the piece and he just left and I said well we can stop now we that's clearly we're just going to do that and she agreed and um you look at his resume um he doesn't have a remarkably memorable face he doesn't have a remarkably memorable voice he doesn't have some sort of you know he doesn't have a hook the guy has never ever ever not booked the job his resume is just one he just moves from thing to thing to thing. He obviously walks in

and he's just, so he's like, okay, we feel really solid with this guy. I, as we went along, you realize how sympathetic and how gentle and how vulnerable he is as well and how he can play that through everything. And you realize, you know, he,

I mean, Cyril's a character that could exist in so many shows. I mean, I've talked about it before. He could be at Dunder Mifflin, you know. I mean, he could be, he's, he's a, he's a universal character. And then he's also, he's also epically specific to this. I've, I've been hiding my affection for him all the way through. I don't have to hide it anymore. It was, it was nice to, it was nice to be able to come out on the junket and have people see the show where I could really talk about him as a romantic and not have people stare at me like, what are you talking about?

Because that's who he is. He's a very, very, I feel very sad for him. I really do. I guess the partner question to that would be to talk a little bit about Denise and Dedra, who I don't want to ask you, like, did she ever love him or does she love him? Or what kind of love is that? And the similar way to what Andy was asking about Cassian and Bix, their relationship twins, Cassian and Bix to some extent,

I found myself trying to decide what was a business. bigger insult. Cassian not knowing who he was or Krenick referring to him as Dedra's fringy friend. Oh my God. I was really blown away by that, but, you know, she's, I think the scene where she's obviously got the shakes after Gorman is certainly related to what's just taking place, but also what just happened between her and Cyril and the last moments of his life. Can you tell me a little bit about her performance as this absolutely magnetic character. I mean, just that upside down smile,

that frown that she has, it says everything you need to know about the character, but then she does so much more. You want to keep some element of chaos about every character. I think that's a really good rule of thumb for anybody who's writing. I think you want to,

when you remove all the chaos and just strip them down, you run a great risk of them flattening out. And most people that we know, almost everybody that we know, is not a straight line. Everybody's got some chaos. With Dedra, it's a really, it's a really burning furnace, but it's really, really, really small and it's really buried deep. And, and I don't, she's telling me how she feels about Cyril. I don't, I don't have a definition of what her relationship with him is I could probably do some, I could probably speak somewhat about

Cyril's attraction to her and what she represents to him and, you know, the replication of some alpha predator emotional dominance or she represents the empire or order or just a success or he just, whatever. But her attraction to him and what he means to her, I'm letting her define that for me but I think she's I think that furnace of chaos is unleashed

in in Gorman and I think when she's in that box of a room she's back in the kinder block or she's in Narcena 3 or she's in the box that she's been trying to get out

of her whole life you know I've two kind of process questions for you and I'll give you a specific holding pen for the answer if you don't mind But like, specifically, let's start with, we're talking about Gorman. Let's talk about 208, which is the massacre episode.

I'm curious about how that episode gets shaped in terms of what you want to accomplish with it, what you bring into the room for conversation, and how you specifically balance the A story beats, which we've been talking about, like Dedra and Cyril's, the end of their relationship, let's call it that, with the specific scenes of what is going to be happening. in the plaza and how to scaffold that for maximum impact. So the two elements of crafting that episode between like the emotional story that's important to you and then also the visual dynamism of what has to happen action-wise. If it's even possible to sort of articulate in a... Yeah, no, I mean, structurally, it was a different structure before coming out of the room. And Luke and I had built Gorman and brought a pretty... a pretty specific Gorman into the room when we went. So, you know, we had the, we had a lot of the

pieces for what the economy was and how it was going to work and what it might look like and the scale of it and that it would probably run. It would have to run over five episodes to be economically viable. We can't build a set that big if we're not going to use it that much. But Danny kind of got boned on this because we were really going to do the massacre. I think the massacre occupied, I'd have to go back and look maybe two thirds of the episode. And then the last third of the episode would have been mostly what happened in 209. So it was a very long episode. It was really, we're trying to pack a lot in there because we really wanted to do 209 was a standalone episode, a K2 episode that was sort of like, you know, its own, it was its own

deal where it was a transport with Vell and Melshi and Cassian and Rolf. on the thing. They were smuggling stuff to Yavin and they got overrun by a thing and then the K2 was on the ship. It was a whole contained massive and it was kind of a little masterpiece that he made. When that became economic, that had to fall off the budget. And again, the show was better for it, but it fell off. It was about the time that we were realizing, I think, simultaneously that the events of 209 were the Senate stuff was too juicy and too good and too to had the chance for being it had so many opportunities in it it was a shame to rush it and then we also then came to the idea that you know what if we're going to do the massacre we should just do the freaking massacre

and we should just do it and like let it who's going to if we really do it right who's going to want anything else on it right you know it should just really be it should just really be the steak on the on the on the plate and um and uh so that all got rebuilt and rejiggered around and there was still some rejiggering about the top of eight and nine um as we went along but then you're building that and then it's then it's a question of what can we do uh we have the town square how many extras can we get how long can we shoot it um what's the architecture what are the what are the you know it really comes down to in all of these things every, you know, how many, how long does it take to walk from here to there? How long could people

be firing and shooting before everyone was dead? How long should it be before this happens? Well, how much time do we have? How much attendance can we take? How many characters can we carry? And stories can we, can we maintain throughout that plaza as it goes? I mean, they've become very, there's a whole narrative architecture part of it. And then, and then the, the, By that point, the director and the AD and the DP are very much involved. And it's Janice Metz directed it. But Sean Gest, who is the assistant director on this episode, was specifically hired because he's just a, he's a legendary, unbreakable AD, you know, because we're going to be outside. We're going to be there for a month.

You're going to have three, four hundred people. You've got to wrangle. You've got to keep. I mean, it's a real physical. And Sean Gess came in. Mark Hatton who's shooting it is pretty much hired because he's another beast. You know, he's another, you can't have somebody with a low pain threshold who's going to come in there and shoot that block. It has to be.

So Janus is surrounded by people who really are rugged about it. Zana's getting us all the resources we need to do it. Luke is, you know, making sure that everything works around that square for us. Mark Maley, who is our unheralded. stunt coordinator and second unit builder, has to build the fight, and not has to build the fight in the, in the cafe,

but he has to do all of the stunts, all of the stuff in the square is Mark Maley and his crew and team. That all has to be pre-vised. It all has to be worked out in a rehearsal thing. It all has to be filmed on an iPhone and then film on a camera and rebuild. I mean, it's,

and then we get it and then we have too much. And it's got it. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, the first cuts come in. You're like, oh, my God. No one could stay out there that long. And, you know, Janice and Jan Miles were cutting, go, no, we need all this stuff.

And Johnny and I are like, no, you got to cut another two minutes out of it. And they're like, you can't be done. And then, you know, as it can. And then they're like excited that it can be done. And it's just, man, it just goes on and on and on and on and on. Sound department. Brandon Robbrenn comes in and it's like, what kind of, what's the soundtrack for this? You know, we had put in those horns, you know.

I said, man, give me those. I mean, I'll go really inside, because we're tiling, because we only have 300 extras and we need to make it look like more, smoke. Where do we get smoke from? So we go, you know what? When people keep bees, they have smokers. So maybe the guys have smokers when they do the spiders. So we make the promotional film for Gorman, smokers, smokeers in there. So when the people come through the streets, they have these horns that they blow that are part of the agriculture. And then they have these smokers that they come through. So it's organic to the civilization, but it fits to the- It has like the European football match walk-up. Exactly. It's like every trick in the book. It's so wild. Everybody, it's everybody scrumming together to try to make that party. The level of granular thinking on both sides of the ball here is so awe-inspiring

because you're thinking about the smokers for practical reasons and also cultural reasons. And then there's a whole swath of fandom being like, Clayah sounds like Leia. Here's how that's who she is. Like everybody's coming. at it with their particular specificities. This is why Danny and I are saying yesterday, it's like, what are, everyone's talking about, but like, we were

worried about, you know. The other thing. So one other process question, what's, you know, the majesty of the show is that I'm asking about two very specific, very different things in specific ways in back-to-back episodes. So you mentioned 209, I would just like to take this moment

to say, thank you, that is my Star War forever. That's my favorite one. Parliamentary procedure? Parliamentary procedure and how it can go wrong. You like born Star Wars. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we saw you're making the show. That's literally what we said. And here we are. We finally got there. Years later. It's a brilliant episode and it's so gripping. But what I wanted to ask you about specifically was, again, process-based. The episode, as I've learned after watching it and loving it, is a delicate dance with canon. I have been informed and I have now learned that like Mon Mothma gives a speech, a second speech that is, you know, in the cartoons and there's a separate rescue mission and all of this. Just wondering how. how you learned, and you can talk specifically within this episode,

if it's easy to kind of embrace those pre-established beats as an opportunity to scaffold something interesting as opposed to a hardship, right? That, like, wait, we can't do the thing that we're careening towards doing. I must be drawn to that or good at it or something. I did it in Born Legacy where we put the other, we were like, what do we? We put the other movie behind it. Like, oh, my God. And then if you see, like, I was very annoyed when I came back to do Andor from Rogue

that in the fan fiction or in some of the other canon, they already had a backstory on Wikipedia that Cassie and Andrew was from a planet called Fest. And I was like, what is this? And I, my job one was like, I got to explain this guy's accent. It drove me crazy on Rogue that people had accents, but they spoke English, but they never spoke another language with each other. I was like, what is that about?

So I wanted to explain his accent. So I'm like, so I retconned that in a way. I said, oh, that's the story that Marva told the officials because they didn't want her to know. that he was really from Canari, and that's how it got into Wikipedia. So fine. It's that kind of hijacking. So the same thing here. They didn't. I love it. Gorman was never specified. They never had any information about it. It was a blank slate, but there was two Gorman massacres in their own, they had their own problem with Canada. And if you talk to Star Wars officinados pre and or, and mentioned the

Gorman massacre, their definition of it would be depending on whether they watched legends or watched the cartoon. So, I don't know, I arbitraged the gap there and said, okay, you know,

print the legend and we'll make this actually turn this into something. The line that really made it for me is when Cassing, after he's told, hey, it's, you know, they're going to take her off. It's better for PR reasons if they bring her and whatever. when he lands back at Yavin and Draven is there and he gets back in and he gets off the ship and

he comes off and Draven says oh my god I hope you understand it's better if she's with and he goes I don't give a fuck him yeah we were talking about that on the way in he says he's going to make a speech he goes I've heard her speak yeah that was the time we felt your authorial fingerprint the most um one more process question that also ties into maybe the other anchor of this show aside from Diego and the Cassian character is Stellen and Luton. In 10, especially, I really felt the passage of time with him.

Not only because we get to see a bit about him, I believe in 10 or is it 11 that you get the flashbacks to Clea with Luton. Not only because you see the younger version of him, but also because of these little details like Clea having to remind him to tuck his shirt in, his changing attitudes about the ideas of perfect these little things that you really feel the five years

for that character and maybe a perception that there is a horizon coming was there a mechanism in writing to sort of annotate where these people are on a long arc within these episodes so that you can say this is now at the point this is what's happened to Luthan over the intervening years

that means he doesn't tuck his shirt on the most important day of his life. Lutthin is the easiest character for me to identify with in the show. I mean, I'm not getting any younger. I mean, the show took its toll on me. The same way the rebellion is taking the toll on Luton, in a way, it's the same time frame. It's five years.

It's very easy for me to relate to the entropy. And it was always, you know, it's easy to, it's easy to, I mean, it wasn't hard to figure out what those markers would be as he, as he degraded with Yavin and with the relationships around him. Stellan's age itself was working in the right direction for us, the same way, you know, Wilman's age is working in the right direction for us, as Diego's age is working in the wrong direction. So, you know, Stellans wasn't getting any younger on the show either. And so it was easy to just naturally fit into, I mean, it was kind of natural what was going to happen, I think. Yeah. I found the scene with him and Lonnie, another indicator of that, first of all, maybe my favorite scene in the show. God, that's good.

The final scene between them? Yeah. Just the way Alonzo did it, but also the, you know, there's that quick flash where he's got a little bit of that ego where he's like, what are they saying about me? And he's like, it's not fucking about you. There's a goddamn battle station above us. And, you know, that last bit of running an agent

where Lonnie is just looking for that carrot. And he says, yeah, Yavin, we'll be safe there. Yeah. I need to know if we have fast or good. Yeah. Yeah, no. Look over here. Yeah, no.

He's, and Robert M's. I mean, these actors. They're unbelievable. I mean, you know, and the directors. I mean, as you're right, Alonzo. I mean, I mean, we talked about Ariel's contribution and we talked a little, I mean, obviously, Janus is, you know, building, building the massacre. But, you know, Alonzo comes in and these are three very delicate episodes at the end. They require a different sort of touch.

and they require really kind of a, it was really pleasing to know that we had more of someone with more, more visually ambitious and a more pushy kind of artistry in a way. Lufin walking down the steps kind of thing. A little bit, yeah, you know, and to get in there. There was more.

And the hospital to me is just a miracle because we weren't supposed to be able to pay for the hospital. and it was just such a huge negotiation and we had out of money. And I remember at one point in a horrible meeting at Pinewood where there was just like, oh my God, you can have a hallway and a thing. And you can have an emergency room and you can have this and we'll do that. And you have to rewrite it. It has to be this. And somehow Luke managed to, that hospital is the greatest set for a director I have ever been part of the sight lines, the architecture of it. If you go back and look at here coming for her, the fact that it's designed in this horseshoe and you can see who's over there and you can see,

what's over here, and you always know where you are, is just, it's my fantasy set. And Alonzo just shot the hell out of it, yeah. Tony, as we steer towards wrapping up here, like this might be, you might still be too in it to comment, but I am curious about your perspective, having made the show and having had the career that you have had and continue to have about what this accomplishment means

or doesn't mean, quite frankly, for where we're at with film stories. telling. I think Chris and I, I know you've heard us say this in person and on podcast, talk a lot about how increasingly it seems like the most original ideas have to be Trojan horsed into pre-existing IP or into a larger shared cinematic universe or whatever. We talk about that and we flag examples of, well, they did the best they could. And that's almost a new kind of praise that we give being like, I see the intention and then Thanos snapped his fingers, but they did their best. You've done it. I mean, we think we love this show. we think it's a miracle, we think it stands on its own, and it is also an incredible revitalization of Star Wars. Do you come out the other side of it feeling like, look, it's possible? Or do you not have that particular perspective on, like,

well, this is the way things have to go if one wants to make the shows they want to make? I've seen civilizations rise and fall in Hollywood, and I went to work for, I worked for, you know, Gullum and Glovis. I worked for Canada. I worked for an Interscope. Dynastic Company.

Castle Rock. Dynastic company. You know, I could all that. I've seen, I've read so many, it's the beginning of this. It's the end of that. And I'm also second generation. So I watched, this is the end of films.

It's television. I don't, I am leery of any kind of grand thesis because I've seen too many things roll over. People. clearly need stories. They need them bad. That's really what they want. I think we said this before you go anywhere, as bad as the business may be, that's all people talk about what they're watching. You have a show based on just watching what other people watch. It's like, I mean, it's a whole, it's a, it's a, it's an essential need at this point. So I'm not fearful of that. The economics are

really rugged right now. It's really rough out there for, for economics. It's, but there are more people who are capable of doing this than they're probably ever were before. There's a lot of frauds. There's a lot of people that shouldn't be doing this

that are doing. It's sort of like, it's, you know, it's like it's expansion baseball or something, you know? I mean, there's only a certain number, but there's more people,

I think, that can do it than ever before. And there's more of a history in, um, canon for people to look at and go, I want to do that. I want to do something like that. I would be violating a very basic personal dictum if I tried to give an overarching idea of what I thought the movie business or the storytelling business was going to do.

Right now today, this minute, I'm more worried about what's going to happen on the planet than I am about what's going to happen in Hollywood. And I think that that's a I think that's probably a universal anxiety. I have no idea what AI is going to do. The terror of AI that I had when it first came out and have had sort of spasmodically throughout its gestation period is probably a little bit assuaged right now by some people that I've talked to recently who are discussing AI's problems and that AI has a functional basic problem. I don't know if that's true. I don't know what AI will do. I should be sage about this And I should have some sort of really great

historical perspective on it. But all history's taught me is that it keeps rolling And people need stories. If you complain about it, If you bitch about it, it's like complaining about the weather. It's useless. Oh, we can't do this anymore.

Oh, it used to be this. It used to be that. I don't ever want to be that dude. I really don't. I don't want to make that mistake. I watched a generation of writers before me do that, and I think we've all learned from that. It's not a good way to go.

You've got to roll, you've got to go with what's there right now. But it's tough out there. It's tough right now. My last question is about the very beginning, well, not the very, very beginning, but maybe the beginning of the and or process for you, which, and correct any of my historiography here,

if I'm wrong, that you wrote this memo to Kathy, Kennedy that was like, here's why you shouldn't do this show. But if you were going to do it, this is how you need to do it. I was wondering if you had revisited that document anytime recently. And if there was anything in there that you thought you got wrong, and what if it did you say, oh, I nailed it with that idea? Oh, no. It's about seven, eight pages long. I looked at it about a year ago because it came up somewhere. I have it in here. But it's very, no, it's dead on. It's basically you, because they kept trying to make a show with the two of them storming the Citadel.

You know, that was the pilot. Storming the Citadel. Get the, get the disc. Get the Tesseract. Yeah. The freaking thing. Like, okay, well, what are you going to do? Like, you can't do that every week. Or you could. I don't know who's going to watch that. But you're going to run out of protein for stories very, very quickly. I mean, there's a bunch of shows that are on where you watch and you go like, how are they going to, where are they going to go? what are they going to feed on going forward? They just killed their, you know, they killed their forward motion. And I was basically saying you have a story waiting for you. You have this guy.

Pick him up on the worst day of his life. Make it five years ago. Find somebody who's the least likely person to be in Rogue One, to least likely be that guy, but who is wearing the same clothes and has the same name, start him there, make it as hard as you possibly can to get to rogue, and save the droid for as late as possible. I mean, that's been a negotiation all the way through to push K2 down to the end of the line. I mean, it's really, you can imagine the appetite for him for for for the audience, for Disney, for everybody. Like, how soon can we get him? And Alan's just brilliant at it. It's a brilliant

character. People freaking love it. When you're in Tokyo, it's something. celebration. When he comes out, the place goes nuts. So you're like, how long are we going to hold the, you know, the headliner? But I said, you just can't do it. It's death, story death. And so that document is pretty dead on. It's pretty much, it's the beginnings of the show that we made, for sure. Tony, we, you know, we're big fans of you and of your work. And we know both, you know, on the record and off the record, like struggles and things just to get things made, to get things over the finish. line to get the chance to do it. You did it with this one. You absolutely did it. And the fact that you did it with such a big, the biggest toys in the store and with a big audience and big platform, but also found a way to use all the things that do motivate you. Like you just said, you're more scared about the state of the world. And this is an expressly political show, rich with history and things that, as you've said in other interviews, you've spent time reading not necessarily for an artistic goal just to learn. this the softest softball question of all is how are you feeling today COVID aside having put this out

I'm really I don't know what to do with myself I there's a level of affirmation that that is antithetical to everything that got you there you know you don't get here by I mean you have to summon some a lot of confidence every day to be able to write and and do that but it's a different, it's a different thing. I always get overwhelmed and I get emotional one at affirmation and it's, I think a lot of people do. This is, I'm bathing in it right now. People are, it's, it's overwhelming. It's a wonderful thing. I'm not complaining. It's just an absolute miracle. I think we all are and the people who worked on the show, we just keep calling each other or texting each other going, oh my God, or did you see this or holy cow. I mean, try to imagine what

it feels like, you know, it's really, I'm very, very pleased. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sure in a few months, I will stand back and not be able to believe what we did. I don't understand. I'll probably not understand or remember how we got there. I have that experience on other things. It's like, how do we do that? I'm, um, I'm blown away. And, and I know that, uh, I know that it's a, I'm honored. I'm lucky. And I know that in the end, I know that I'll wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning going like, what the fuck am I going to do tomorrow? And if I don't find something to occupy myself, I'll go crazy.

It's the making of stuff that keeps me sane. And it's my place to hide out making stuff. And affirmation is a really great bath, but it's not, I don't take a lot of baths every year. I'm a shower guy. I get back in the shower. we'll let you towel off then yeah does that make sense i mean absolutely absolutely um it's been really enriching having these conversations with you over the course of the last two seasons these last couple of years it's really it's been really good to get to know you guys too man it's been a

really cool place to be it really has been yeah man thank you so much for joining us and congratulations on everything because you really deserve it take care of man thank you thank you i'm taking it in