The Watch - Tony Gilroy Returns to Talk 'Andor' Episode 10

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

Chris and Andy talk briefly about this latest episode of 'Andor' and the way the previous episodes have built up to the prison break (1:00). Then, they are joined for a second time by 'Andor' creator Tony Gilroy to talk about how he conceptualized the prison (19:30), and how he tries to put his actors in the best positions to succeed (39:07). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Tony Gilroy Producer: Kaya McMullen 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 on the other line. I think of him constantly. It's Andy Greenwald. That had a real us vibe at the end of this episode of Andor, didn't it? Yeah, the question is who's Lonnie and who's Luthin? Andy, what a special show we have today.

As promised, Tony Gilroy makes his second appearance on the Watch podcast to discuss everything that's happened on Andor up through episode 10. So spoiler warning, Ahoi, if you have not listened, we're going to try and get this up early. So as soon as you guys get a chance to listen or watch and or rather, the 10th episode, you can just dive right in with your two best galactic buddies,

you know, the sort of tour guides of the Lucasfilm universe. Andy, what's going on with you? Is that us? You're talking about us? Are we the tour guides? Yeah, you and me. That's great. You're Lando and I'm the guy with many cheeks.

Just sit next to Lando. That's right. I'm stressing out. Things are good. You know, I was just reading about how Maddie Healy... Oh, B.T. Dubs. We're recording this on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Oh, yeah, so everything's fine.

That's why you hear this note of optimism in our 46th. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. I have gone full Cameron and Daphne, White Lotus Season 2. Oh, yeah? Yeah, why I read the news? It just bums me out kind of thing. Yeah, everything's good.

And I'm very optimistic. Chris, I was just reading about how Maddie Healy, from the band, the 1975, was on stage at Madison Square Garden last night, pretending to masturbate and eating a raw steak. And then I was reading that his mother, who I did not know, is a famous actress on Coronation Street in the UK, was in the crowd. And so someone was like, don't take your parents to the show with footage of Maddie Healy grabbing his crotch.

And she was like, imagine if you are the mom, nauseous emoji, nauseous emoji, nauseous emoji. And all of this is just background. to say, like, I think of the many weird things that have happened this year, pre-midterms, you know, because I think it's going to get super weird starting tomorrow. Me suddenly loving the 1975, that's big up there for me in my personal rolodex of surprises. You know what the thing with you is? Yeah. You've now, like, limited the amount of culture that you interface with that you can have,

like, real big swings of emotions. And I love you for it, you know? Like, it's like, if you only watch five shows, to whom are going to be great. First of all, as a critic for many years, I can attest that is not true. That is not true. I would say, honestly, like great TV shows. I mean, baseball players have better, you know, like, you fail seven times. You're a superstar.

I think that's easier than TV. But no, I don't feel that's the case of the music. I listen to music. We just don't do much music on this podcast anymore. It doesn't do numbers. And this is a sort of data-driven podcast, if anybody knows, like my kind of approach that's really moneyballing it. I'm looking for the inefficiencies wherever I can find it. And that's why we hammer the shows that are important, like Andor.

I'm pretty surprised that, you know, now that we are part of the larger Spotify, is it a community? It's Scandinavian. So I feel like it's a collective. Yeah. That we aren't more data-driven. Do you know what I mean? Or do you protect me from that? Because guys, you should know this.

Like, I feel like if there is critical rain drumming down on the rooftop of this podcast, Chris is the, Chris keeps us dry. I like to put my playmakers in a position to make plays. Like, I don't want that cloud in your head. I don't want that nagging at you. Thanks, buddy. Yeah. Your 1975 affection is great.

I think I, too, I was late coming to the band, but, you know, I've just, super appreciate what they do. And I think that if I was younger, I'd be right there watching that guy masturbating, eat steak. You are younger. Come on. It's not your birthday till next week.

Andy, should we jump into this 10th episode of Andor? Yeah. This is the best show on TV. Yeah. By like a pretty, pretty far margin. Yeah. And my favorite thing about this show now is that

it's not that it would be considered predictable because I really don't know where this thing is going even though we ultimately know where this thing is going especially for Cassian there's a sensation that I get

I need the German word for this okay of when you're watching something and you know what you're about to get is the thing that you have been expecting and yet somehow the thing exceeds your wild

us dreams of what that thing, of what your expectations could be. So you're watching this. This is not for as brilliant as this show is, it's not reinventing the wheel. Yeah. And you're like, okay, like he's going to get out of prison. That'll be cool. And it's way cooler than I could have possibly imagined. And I'm like, at some point, Luthan's going to have a big monologue because that's what spies do is eventually they have to fucking break it all down and tell you who they are and what they're all about. And I'm like, oh, Luthon's going to have a big speech now. They're really, they got Stel blocked on this bridge. She's wearing a cape. Kind of looks like Darth Vader. Don't know what that's about.

And I'm like, it's going to happen now. We're going to get it. And I'm like, that's the best fucking speech I ever heard. I'm like, it's like that in the Gettysburg address. I don't know. I don't know what to say. And so the show keeps doing it. What is that feeling when you're like, oh, I knew this was coming and it's so much better than I could have anticipated. It's called pleasure. We don't, we don't seek it. We don't talk about it. We don't consider its role in our entertainment nearly enough.

And we mistake again and again. And I feel like we've said versions of this before when we've been raving about things. We overrate surprise. We overrate innovation. We overrate disruption. There is something to be said for the shock of the new. And some of our favorite shows of the last few years, whether it's I May Destroy You or Atlanta and Fleabag, which you were, you know, I think correctly name checking

last week in terms of when things started to pivot in this television moment. there is something about them that is both good for us as viewers in the moment and good for the industry writ large. It's laying down a marker that this could be something else and that's wonderful. But we like to, it's not, honestly, by the way, it's not just TV. Like you could repurpose this argument and make it about food. You know, you can make it about interactions with friends or nights out or romance. Like, surprise is overrated. We have a sense of where things are going or where they might.

end up. We don't know how we're going to get there. And that's where the magic is. In being excited that we're going to go on a ride, we know where the ride ends, but we don't know the exact pace of the journey or what we're going to see along the way. And so you're right. This season is a masterclass in that. Because in these three episode arcs, we, we, because we like culture and we've watched many things and read books, we know where this is going. We knew that when they were on Aldani that there would be a giant set piece, that something would go wrong, that not everyone would survive when you Cassian would, but beyond that, we didn't. And it was in no way less pleasurable because of that. In fact, it was more pleasurable because we were on the tips of our

toes or edges of our seat being like, okay, how is this going to go? And so same thing. You put them on a prison planet with, what is it, 5,000 men. Who knows? They don't know. They can't figure. It's like, how many levels are there to that place? Yeah. They don't know. And, you know, little things. We we keep checking the small details and praising Luke Hull, the production designer for the details, and Tony Gilroy and his other writers and collaborators for all the details. But like when Cassian arrived on the planet, we noticed the ocean. We noticed the churning, I don't know what those called, combines, whatever those are. They mattered. It all mattered. We knew there was going to be a prison break, but we didn't know what it was going to look like. And it's so fucking fun.

It's so fun to know that whoever, the person who's driving the bus is a master. You know what you're talking about, you're talking about the way we feel about the show in general. Like, I'm, I'm talking about these specific moments, but I think the reason why we've been overwhelmed by this thing is, it's like when you read great poetry or great literature, and you realize that it's articulating something that you've never felt but had the words for, you've always felt, but you've never had the words for. And not to compare, like, you know, and or to like a Wallace Stevens poem or something, but Like, you are like, I've always kind of wondered what it would feel like if this took itself

very seriously and talked about like what would happen if a bunch of people decided they had had enough of the empire, but they weren't wizards, you know? What would happen if, how do you raise money? How do you radicalize people? How do you get them to become true believers? How do you get people to give up their lives? How do you, what kind of sacrifices would have to be made across the board? and we're starting to see that. And so, like, watching the show, I'm never like, oh, my God, I can't believe the multiverse twist here.

You're just like, oh, yeah, like, this is on another level than I knew was possible for this. Yeah, and let's talk about, this comes up briefly, I think, in our conversation with Tony, but the, and I don't even think it's a straw-wookie argument, but, like, the idea that one of the problems with the show is that there aren't a lot of aliens. Well, like, look, step aside from that for a second.

This show has put humanity back, into Star Wars. Remember, it's not just the aliens or the huts or the whatever. We're talking about the Mandalorians with their masks that have dominated the mythos for all this time. We're talking about a movie series that when it talks about human emotion, talks about how it's bad. That fear leads to hate and hate leads to suffering and suffering leads to the dark side. And these things need to be clamped down on and buried deep and turned into magic powers that will It's supposed to be a monk. To defeat your father, defeat your evil.

That aspect of Jediism and religion is, you know, it's honestly fascinating when there's space to poke at it. But we haven't really poked at it. We've just sort of folded it into the superhero myth, which is to say that, like, it's better to be Superman than Clark Kent. So let's go for that. Right. This episode, I mean, all of them have been broadly about that in the most wonderful way

possible, but Monmothma's fear and disgust about the choices that are laying in front of her, which we should circle back to because that scene was amazing. But specifically thinking about Andy Circus's arc, which we do talk to Tony about. But like, we are living with this guy for three episodes. And we understand what motivates him. We understand why he is the way he is. And it's due to a great performance, but also great writing. And the decision that he makes to rebel, how he rebels, what it means for him to rebel,

all to build to a moment where he has made something of his life, at least to us, the audience, into those who followed him, and he can't swim. You know, he can't swim. Yeah. It's a beautiful moment, and that's all of it right there. You know what I mean? Like, he didn't, they were all afraid. He didn't have a political epiphany either.

This is the best thing about it. It's like, there's no political epiphany on, on Kino's part. He doesn't all of a sudden start looking at Nemik's notebook and start thinking in terms of, like, overthrowing power structures. He's like, I'm out of options. I had a pretty good life here as good as it could possibly that I'm the shot caller in this prison and my number's going down.

Then he finds out that it doesn't matter if your number goes down to zero because you're just going to get transferred to another bridge basically. And he is like, okay, if you remove all these other options and then that ties in to the Luthin speech because Luton is essentially talking about

sacrificing 50 men just for Lani. And it's cold and it's calculating and it's cynical, but it also gets Lonnie to start thinking, what's this? If this guy is willing to do this for me, he's willing to do anything for his ultimate goal. And I'm sure one of the reasons why Luthin is as candid as he is with Lonnie in that last scene between the two of them

is because he doesn't really think he'll ever see this guy again, nor will he see him again. Because I just have a feeling, like, there's one way out here, as they say in that prison. There's not going to be a reunion of the rebels talking about what great moves they made. This is cutthroat zero-sum stuff. And I just thought that those two scenes

kind of spoke to probably Tony's vision of what does it really take to stage a rebellion? Well, it takes eliminating everybody else's other options because who would want to be part of a rebellion? Who would want to do that? And I love that the show asked the question. And also, I feel like, you know, we were sort of hoping this would be here

and there were elements of it surrounding it, but this is also a spy show now. Yeah. You know, like, it's just all our favorite genres mashed into one. And the whole execution of that scene is, it's La Caree, right? Like, it's checkpoint Charlie. It's just, it's thrilling. And when we, you know, Lonnie's a character that we have been seeing since the season premiered.

I wish I had the actor's name in front of me. I will remedy that next week. But he is a phenomenal face, you know, like they've cast these rooms of people just as they ought to have. And so that you remember them. You see them in the background. You don't know what they're capable of or who they are. And in that moment, we just, we understand the stakes. And we're feeling for, and it's performance again, great performances, but we understand the stakes is something that we didn't, we weren't even aware of just moments before. And I think I want to, I want to bring up one of the thing before we get to our interview with Tony, which is, which didn't come up. But, you know, we're,

power ranking all of our 1975 songs before we get to Tony, just so you know. Oh, good. And can all of them be from being funny in a foreign language? Because, to your point, I really like the new one and we'll work our way backwards from there. Happiness number one, wintering number two. Obviously, we adore the show and we adore it for what it is and also for what it represents

and for what it's doing. And something bubbled up last week that I don't know if it's, I don't know if this is serious enough that it crossed any of our listeners' transoms, but people are like, oh, is Clea Luthan's assistant? Is she Leia?

because her name is Clea, and that's Leia with a K. And she has a similar haircut. Sort of where you go when you start thinking about is, are they building the Death Star and that prison? What are the connective tissues to the larger Star Wars universe beyond like Kling War stuff? And I just want to say, like, I think this show is a corrective to that thinking. Now, maybe it's more of a vaccine. So it doesn't prevent full infection, but it definitely blunts the effects of it.

Like, if it's fun for you to watch this show that we're described, and be like, oh, is that Admiral Akbar's grandpa? Oh, in the aquarium? Is that who that is? So this means something more? Like, okay, that's fine. Like, that's one way to engage with culture, and we're not here to tell you you're doing it wrong.

Although, if you are doing that with fish tanks, you might be doing it wrong. It's that it doesn't matter. This is what this show is. Look what it's doing. Look what it's doing. That is an entertainment on its own. You know what I mean?

And I feel like if you're chasing those questions, I just kind of feel bad because you're missing the point. it's an important bulwark to establish that like something Star Wars could just be good. You know, and I would say this about other IP when we cover and if we have the opportunity to say that. You know, it might be an interesting test case in a way to think about that question when Wakanda forever comes out in a week because, you know, again, I'm doing, I'm just avoiding, I don't want to read anything about it. I just want to see the movie. But I did see one headline that was basically like the original drafts of the movie when Chadwick Boseman was going to be able, when he was. was alive and able to participate in it was more connected to the blip and the snap and the snap

and obviously they had to change all that and you know that there's a there's a there's a glimmer of hope in that for me because I think it would be good for the movie and for the franchise and for ryan cougler and for the cast and for marvel frankly to have something that was just good please well i mean in in some ways it's a it's a testament to the fact that maybe the more um i wouldn't say it's been described as scattershot or haphazard or whatever, but the way in which Star Wars has sort of been assembled over the last few years where it's like, we're trying to figure out what works and oh my gosh,

like Baby Yoda, like we gotta do more stuff like this. And, you know, maybe you get a little bit of freedom on the margins if you're not like, well, we gotta start building towards Kang though. You know,

like we got it. Everything ultimately has to go towards this main thing. And it'll be interesting to see how like James Gunn and Peter Safran handled DC. You know, I have less time for the DC characters, but just as a thought experiment. like do you start from zero?

Do you work with people you already have? Do you have multiple storylines that seem in Congress with one another going at the same time? Like what's the approach there? And what ultimately, since these are things are all consumer driven anyway, what do people show up for? Should we get into our interview with Tony? Yeah.

I mean, and just to say, you know, we're, it's such an honor and such a pleasure to speak to someone who we like so much and admire so much. Yeah. I think he talks about it better than we. than we can, but sort of sets the scene as to where we are now, both in the season and in the project of the series as a whole. We spoke to him last week from his home in New York where he was about to fly to London to begin prep on season two, which is going to be an additional 12 episodes. So there are two episodes left this season, right? And God, it feels, I mean, I'm glad,

I'm so glad they're weekly. Yeah. It's an old school television experience now where I feel like I can't wait for them to come. I can't wait to talk about them with people. I can't wait until like midnight boys in House of R and think about it. And like to hear what other people see in it, what other people feel about it. It's just an awesome. So why I like TV is like it becomes this two-month, you know, community kind of viewing experience. Yep.

That's why I'm on the boards. It's why I'm in the forums. We are produced as always by Kai McMahon. Andy and I will be back on Monday to talk about. Are you still on television without pity, but you're doing like the Travolta and Pulp Fiction meme? Just looking for everybody? Yeah. Where'd you guys go? Twitter?

We're produced by Kaya. That's Andy. I'm Chris. Here's Tony Gilroy. 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.

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We are so excited to have Tony Gilroy back on the watch to discuss screenwriting, SpyCraft, the Star Wars Prison Industrial System, and all things and or up through episode 10. Tony, thank you so much for coming back on. Oh, man, it's my pleasure. You guys been killing it. You're the one that's been killing it, Tony. As you know, as you've heard, we love your show. We love the show. We feel lucky to be watching it week to week and having so much fun with it. And, you know, when we last spoke a couple weeks ago, we had seen, I believe, four. And now we've seen 10. And one of the things we took away from our conversation with you was that you were biting your tongue. There were things still to come that we hadn't seen that you were, you seemed eager to talk about or eager for us to see or eager to fold into our understanding of the show. And now there were a little bit further down the road. We haven't seen it all yet, of course. But.

I wanted to ask you, what specifically was in your mind when we spoke? Was it specific set pieces, the way the show was to be changing every three episodes, just the scope of what you had in store? What were you thinking about that you couldn't talk about during the first round of press? I think it was the abundance, you know, just how it was hard to describe to people in the beginning how far we were going to go and how deep we were going to go and how, I mean, just how, what a mad buffet of insane depth. we were going to take this thing too and how, you know, just the abundance of it.

It was hard in the beginning. That's why we released those first four because you're like, oh, my God, if people just think it's just going to be in Ferrex and just in Canary and we give them four and then they'll see that it's going to get bigger. But you see now how ambitious everybody's been and we still have a little bit of ways to go. So I think it was mostly about the scale. But you also heard us, I think, say a couple times, like we were so excited to be thinking of those first few episodes as sort of a launch point for Cassian and like where he was going to go

and what was going to define him. So that we were almost surprised that we go back to Ferrix, surprised in a great way because we weren't done with those characters. We were happy to see them again, happy to see them fold in on itself. Dendrous goes there. So that was clearly always part of the plan that it wasn't just going to move in one direction outward. It was going to just continue to create an experience to figure out that we're going back again. I mean, I think everybody would know you could tell that we have a lot of stories still to tell there. So you also have Fiona Shaw there, so you got to go back. We have Andrea.

Andrea. Andrea is still there. Exactly. She's great. Tony, I wanted to ask a little bit about 10 because that was obviously, like probably the most thrilling episode,

both in terms of the prison break set piece, but in terms of Stellan's performance at the end of the episode, which I thought was just phenomenal and, you know, kind of gave me like a peek into the George Smiley character that he is playing. and his understanding of his sort of larger responsibility.

Can you tell me a little bit about conceptualizing the prison? Because obviously, it's a factory as well as being someplace where people are incarcerated, but I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before. And the idea of creating this workplace that's also a prison, I know that jails do produce license plates and all sorts of stuff here. But can you walk us through a little bit about what you saw in your head and how it manifested itself. It was one of the blanks.

And when we came to the writers room, we like so we did this like five, six-day writers room with Bo Willamont and my brother Danny. And then also, I don't if we talked about or not, but Luke Hall, our production designer, was in every one of the meetings. Zana Wallenberg, our producer, in all those meetings. So the show is being built.

And, you know, the tables there, they're sitting in one row back. It's, they're watching the whole thing being built. So there was some, I put a, you know, I think I'd written one, two, three ostensibly and had a lot, you know, I knew where we were going to end up. I knew what 11 and 12 were going to be. But there were some gaps in the middle and one of them was prison. And like you put prison down on the table between Bo and Danny and I and, you know, I mean,

what's the first thing? The first thing is, well, we've been gorging on great prison material for a century of American cinema. I mean, it's just, there's no shortage of great prison. So it's like, well, if we're going to do this, the very first thing is if we can't disrupt it and we can't do something new, then we're not going to do it. So what could we possibly ever do? Forget if it's even germane or forget if it's even, let's just first things first. What's the prison we never saw before? And I really honestly got in the last four days, I'm trying to figure, I don't think we'll ever know who said electric floors because the conversation in that room was just so, such a blur of imagination and antagonist. And whoever,

ever said electric floors, the moment that cat came out and, you know, all of a sudden, we're off to the races. And like, so the construction of the prison and the methodology of the prison and the way it worked, predated, it's elemental, you know, when you're writing well, when you're getting lucky, when you're writing well, all the things that you do mechanically, the little breadcrumbs that you leave, all of a sudden you look back later on, you go, like, oh my God, that actually is thematic. That actually fits with this. That actually And it did, but the prime, I have to be honest, the primary motivation was to do something different first. As you're talking about this, I'm picturing Andy Circus's performance in this.

And, you know, one of the things that we adore about the show and about your writing generally is there are no small characters, there are no small parts. And you're just been so blessed in this series with such incredible actors that I've never seen before that now I will watch whatever they do. Andy Circus is a recognizable face and name. and he comes to this for this arc. And I'm curious about the conception of the character and then also the conversation with him about what he's going to bring to this part, where he's going.

Because as he is, when he's introduced and he's playing a certain role, he's the foreman, he's sort of the, you know, he's a company man, basically on the floor, his transformation, his arc, building to his speech in this episode, and then building to something that I don't want to gloss over, which is the last time we see him,

which is that he can't swim, which is, you know, again, And it's just this cherry on top of the Sunday of this episode. Anyway, there was a question in there that was basically about just... Is the question about the process to get there? I mean, I guess that's a simple... I guess that's a way to walk it in. I mean, look, so you've got to prison?

Okay. And we've determined, oh, we're going to have the... They're going to make something there and the floors are electrified. And oh, my God, that's fantastic. And we're always concerned about the economics of the empire. And like, where do they get all their shit? Who built Scariff? Who built eating?

You know, it's the thing in clerks where he's like, worrying about what the janitors are doing the desktop, right? It's like, for real, man, where does all this shit come from? And like, okay, well, that's cool. Whoa, God, if you have a prison, you've got to have a shot caller. And we need a shot caller, we need an explainer, right? Okay, let's do that. So we got this guy, so he's charismatic guy.

So that's the first thing you have. And then as you start to build it out, this idea was not immediately present, but certainly by the time we get deep into the rewrites and it becomes clear to me, You know, what I love about the prison and Andy is that, you know, for Cassian, this is a survival political experiment. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it, it's a, it, it's a, it, it's a, it, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a microcosm of the empire and it, it, it really is a place where he becomes a leader and does all these, you know, interesting, you know, it's, you know, you know, it's sort of nascent leadership skills. But for me, what's so potent about it, and what we told Andy before he did it really, it's about faith.

It's really a religious thing for me in a sense. I mean, Andy is, his afterlife is freedom. Right? And he has to believe in that. And it's what do you do when you're, you know, it's my version of what do you do when your faith is taken away. You know, it's really a religious thing for him. It's not a political, it's not, I don't see him as a cog in the empire. I don't see him as a proto-fascist or anything else.

I just see him as somebody who believes, if I do the right thing, I will have this afterlife and finds out that they're not going to get that. You touched on Cassian's sort of political awakening that happens in prison. And prisons are, you know, throughout fiction and memoir and film and TV

are known as these places of spiritual and political transformation. What do you think is the difference between the Cassian that goes into that facility and the one that comes out? leadership. I mean, he's been standing the side. What did he do before? He said, oh, you're left-handed. You should be on this side. Or I know how to fly the Rono Trawler. Don't do that. Or like, I killed the guy who was going to rip you off. He's always staying, you know, there's all a joke.

I'm only staying six more weeks. He's only like, he's always an outsider. We can't be an outsider anymore. He's in it. He's in another world. He'll die there. And the only way out, as he realizes, the only way out is to, in some way, way make a rebellion, right? He has to do the thing in a microcosm that all these other people have been talking about and, you know, Alex Lothar's talking about it theoretically. Well, it's very immediate for him. And a really amazing leadership moment where it's not just taking charge, but it's realizing the tools that you have to nominate Andy, to nominate Keeneau as the voice who could motivate people to move forward to realize it's not you, but the tool, the better tool is this other

person. That's a real Spartacus moment, man. That's a really big thing. That's leadership 2.0. And the guy that the guy that gets out of that prison is a different dude than one in. One thing that we know about you as a writer and as a professional is that you're serving the story first. But I have to ask, you know, the glee that you displayed when we spoke the last time about the show and you made reference to us in other interviews about how. how you had accepted that as a professional film writer, whatever high percentage, 80% of your work is never going to get seen.

How much of that affects the decisions you're making with a show where suddenly you have this canvas and you can say, I've always wanted to do a prison story. I've always wanted to do a heist movie. I've always wanted to do Cold War Spycraft. And now you have the canvas to do those stories. No, no. I never say, oh, I have an agenda.

I want to get to that. it doesn't feel. No, I don't go. I mean, there's so many, I mean, all the opportunities just present themselves anyway. So why should I worry about any of that? No, I, you know, no, I'm trying to follow the,

I'm trying to follow the trail. I'm trying to pull the string all the time. If you don't pull the string, then we lose our way. Because it's, I mean, look, I mean, anybody who's, if you're, and you guys are deeply appreciating the show and I'm assuming people that listen to you,

you know, I mean, this is more than anything else. This is an exercise in plotting. I mean, we have to plot. The plot is every single step of the way. Every single thread. Every buttonhole has to be done. Everything has to be proper. It has to be right.

And it's just that comes first. So I wouldn't want to say, oh, gee, I got to do a, you know, I got to do this. I got to, you know, I don't even know what the scene would be. I don't have a farming scene. So I got to do the farm. You know, I mean, it's not like that. Well, so then let's talk about the plot. Let me ask you about the plotting piece because plotting and structure and getting things buttoned up and tight, you know, within the 120 pages that you have is your job.

You know, it's a huge part of the job that you've had for many years and excel that. Traditionally, you know, in a TV writer's room, like, that's where that gets done. You know, you get the eight or nine disparate voices and you're like, well, what about this? Maybe that. I have a sense of where this could go. You mentioned having the room and having prison written on the board with with your brother and with with Beau. when you walked into that room, how much of the plotting was already determined by the work you'd done alone and how much was open for debate in that room, in a more traditional TV sense. I don't really, I mean, I dropped, you know, 100 pages of stuff on the table. I don't know. I had the beginning. At the end, I had the, you know, I have, I think I had a lot of the idea for the basic idea for Aldani. I knew he's going to go to prison. I knew we're going to end up. I mean, I don't know, percentage wise, it's important.

to say, but then it goes beyond, then it goes after that, because then things shift in transit and, you know, and Bo and Danny, and then the second time around, we added Tom Bissell just this last time for this, this last go-round. These sessions are incredibly exciting, and they're just ridiculously fast-paced and aggressive and mean and not for the, not for the faint of heart, but they're incredibly productive, and everybody there really knows how to do that. But that gets you to point B and then everybody goes back and writes their scripts and it gets you to C, D, and E. But then you still have the whole alphabet as you go through production and those guys aren't around and things change and you can't afford them. You know, they don't want to be bothered anymore.

So then you have, you know, then you have a lot of the nitpicky stuff has to just be done afterwards. A lot of follow up conversations and check my work and do this. But it's just, I don't know. I've developed a, it's not Socratic, I guess, but I just, I actually dialogue with myself most of the time. It's just what I learned, I don't know, 20 years ago, whatever, you just can't let anything go. If you think it's a problem, you've got to deal with it. It's just like anything else. It's like a health issue.

It's like if you have a health issue here, it's an infection. If you don't put something on it, it's, so you have to deal with every, and any time you skip a step, you get boned. You get screwed. It's just guaranteed. Was there any character or thread here? that was particularly malignant? Yeah. Like that you think back on as like, well, that's the one I keep having to return to and attend to.

You know, sometimes the things happen and I don't want to say this because I don't want to, I don't want people to jam me with problems, but a lot of times the limitations are really turned out to be advanced. What's an example? Like, Aldani was originally written to have like six, seven thousand people show up for the festival. You know, it was really going to be the Aldani Festival. We're going to really do it. And that was, that's the way it was written.

That's why we did. did it in the room and that's the way we blocked it and it obviously made everything the mechanics of the heist and everything much different but um COVID could it do it can't shoot can't get that many people can't we can't really tile that many people into a into a thing it doesn't really work and it's like oh my god well so there's a budgetary social there's a reason why we can't do it so what do we do so oh okay so you well what if it's dead enders what if it's the end of this thing what if it's the you know, La Cota Sioux on the last reservation. What if it's just, well, that's really even better. That's actually fascinating. And so all of a sudden that becomes its new reality and you

build a new reality and you have to build a whole new blocking system around that. But that's an example of something that was a persistent rub. I think juggling the time frame of the prison, I think when we left the prison in the writer's room and even late into the writing process, it was way too shaggy and we weren't really, how long is he really in there and finding a way to tighten up that, finding way to tighten up the prison was a real bugaboo and, you know, coming up with the idea of, oh my God, new man coming

down. If we don't do it tomorrow, getting to the idea, if we don't do it tomorrow, we'll never going to have another chance. And that's a late discovery, and that changes a lot of things and it really helps stuff out, but that was a real bugaboo along. But those pets are inside baseball screenwriting kind of, that's also what we live for is to

hear stuff like that. I think that the character that I've become more or less obsessed with is Luthan and this episode was very much a Luton showcase towards the end of it, along with the huge set piece in the prison. I was curious, he's obviously a spy master. He talks in his conversation with Lani about life being a performance and never being able, you know, having to be these different people. He is different people.

He's different with Cassian as he is with Vell, as he is in his shop, as he is with Mon. He's different with Lonnie. And I was wondering whether, obviously, Stalin is playing that part with those wrinkles, with those different sort of variations on a theme in those different interactions. How do you write for someone who's performing in their own life like that? Oh, he makes so much sense to me. I don't know.

I just really understand. He's a founder. You know, if you think of it, he's a guy who's made a startup company, you know, a really hot startup. And how do you scale up? What do you do? How do you scale up? And how do you scale up when secrecy? I mean, he's confronting, you know, he panics with Clayah earlier on like, oh my God, we're going to go loud tomorrow. And what's going to happen? And like, we've been doing this. We've been, you know, I've been building this thing in my garage the last 15 years. We're going to take it out on the street tomorrow. What happens? All of a sudden, the neighbors are going to know what we're doing. And it's that the torment of the founder, the torment of the true believer. Everything that he says in that speech, Toulani, I've believe is true. I don't think he's gaming him at all. I think that's a really, I want that to be, and Stella knows that, and we spent a lot of time on that. That is real. What he's saying there is a is a, is a creedicur. I mean, he really, that's as naked as he's ever being. And I think that

will, I think one of the things that we will definitely be playing as we move forward, you know, throughout the whole thing is how do you, how do you scale up? How, what happens to the original as everything gets normalized. So he's even, you think he's being truthful when he says Delani, I think about you constantly because it's almost this act of seduction.

I think he, yeah, I think he, yeah, I think he does. I mean, there's a scene, well,

it's coming up, but I mean, he's going to get overwhelmed by secrecy. How do you stay secret and go bigger and bigger and bigger? How do you keep your, how do you stay alive?

How does he keep his, it's very, we're trying to be very practical And we're not trying to, we don't want to have any loose things like, oh, why doesn't somebody recognize him or why doesn't somebody know who he is or why doesn't somebody talk or whatever. I mean, we're being very trying to be very rigorous about our, about our espionage and our secrecy, the roles of that. And so he's really facing a new kind of fear in our show. But he's very easy to build this. Very easy to build this for the last 10, 12 years ago.

He goes around to barracks and does all these stuff. he's always in secret. Well, now it's a different game, right? Yeah. The line where he says, Clay is like, you know, it's a trap. And he's like, if it's a trap, we already lost. You know, if it's, it doesn't matter anymore, we've now gotten into zero sum territory. They had a lot of cliffs to jump off along the way. Over the course of even just these 10 episodes, you've created dozens of incredibly memorable characters. One character you didn't create is Mon Mothma and Genevieve O'Reilly as a performer you inherited in the role. She had played it all.

already. Her scenes have been some of the best in the series, just absolutely electric and riveting, even though sometimes she doesn't even leave the drawing room. Sometimes she doesn't even leave the couch, as in this amazing scene with the gangster. How do you approach a situation like this where you have an actor that's already cast in a role that is preexisting, and how do you decide what's interesting to you and how to put her in the best positions to succeed? When I went over there in the beginning, when I was going to direct one, two, and three, and that sort of whole winter, fall winter before COVID. And in my naivete, I'm going to do my three and the other scripts are coming in. And somehow this will all work out, whatever the hell I was thinking. I was absolutely numb to what

was coming at me. You know, well, okay, I have Genevieve and she plays Mon Motha. She's supposed to be a pretty good actor. And there's no choice there. We're going to hijack this thing. And I sat down, I met her, and I knew her from Rogue. But it's the same thing with like Kyle and with Denise. And with all these different actors, and particularly with Genevieve, he's starting, oh, my God, this is a strativarius. Holy cap. I can write anything for her.

You start to write better. You start to write more ambitiously. I don't think I had any idea how good she was or what she could do, and I don't think I had really, I don't think I knew how far I was going to take her or what kind of scenes we were going to give her in the beginning.

Now, I think we rose, I think everybody rose into that. she's amazing. She's amazing. I mean, this is the episode with a prison break, and I'm still thinking about her scene on a couch.

I know. That was, yeah, and that was a, that was a, Beau, I remember the night that Beau called me up because you were trying to figure out of what's the

Davos Goulden and how's he going to get out of that problem? And when he called me up and said, oh my God, he goes, what about the sun?

I'm like, oh my God, dude. So we, I was like, he goes, can we do that? And I go,

I don't care what they say, we have to do that? So we went back and we kind of, Bo, have you seen House of the Dragon? You can do that. Oh, no, no, but it's, yeah, but we have a different, we don't. Yeah, I know. We don't have the standards and practices than other people.

We don't have some of the tools that they have. I would love to have some of the, I'd have some of the paints that they have in the Thrones, but we don't have. So, but it's like, yeah, and then, yeah, I love the scene with Davos-Gold. I love it. Staying on the theme of performance for a moment, one thing that really struck me,

especially over the last three episodes, is just the physical nature of Diego's performance. And when we talk about you, Tony, and your writing and the things that we love, there's a certain verbal dexterity in a conversational flow and the way that the words come out and the speed and velocity, et cetera, to have your lead actor be so willing to not be the driver of that, just the decision-making, and as we're speaking, this is a podcast, but Tony is on program right now with his hands. Which I appreciate because I actually was going to ask about that. I was going to be on program. Oh, my God.

But only because you notice during these episodes that Cassian goes on program differently than other people. You know, like this is a, it feels like there are decisions made about what he does with his body versus other people. And that's a different type of writing and a different type of lead performance. Yeah, but it's, I think any writer who's had the benefit. I mean, the drag for a lot of young writers is, You don't get to see a lot of your stuff done. And you don't get to see a lot of actors. And you don't suffer through your own indulgences and all your own bullshit.

You just think everything is fantastic. And, you know, it used to be, I mean, people were playwrights and whatever. Now people, you know, if you're in film school or if you're an unproduced screenwriter, you just don't know how much the camera can do and how much the actors can do. There's nothing like sitting on, I think, Dolores Playbourne, I've told the story before. And Dolores Playborn, we had dailies for, it was like a Robert Alton situation. dailies every night for the whole company in this movie theater in Nova Scotia. And, you know, Taylor likes to, Taylor Hacker likes to shoot a lot of coverage.

So it's the dailies are long and I was writing on it and I was, you know, all these great actors. And I was being encouraged to write all the time. And I just sat there in dailies every night. It just mortified at how my verbosity and why did I write people and get rid of them. Oh my God, I can't believe we're seeing this again. And just so bored with myself and mean. and like that's one level of education. Then you go and direct a movie and you're like,

oh my God, the camera can do everything. All I have to do is put a camera on George Clooney's face in the back of a taxi cab and I can, I can, that's worth everything. And you learn those things along the way. And I've never had a conversation ever with Diego where he says I don't have enough lines where I'm not saying. I mean, this is a camera, movie star, he holds the camera, he knows what to do.

I never think about that. I don't know. I don't if that's the answer to the question or not. It is. You know, I was reading an interview that Denise Gao gave where she was talking about the Dedra character and in the same way that Cassian goes through some sort of kind of awakening transformation in prison,

I feel like putting Deidre in the field, it's maybe not a transformation as much as it is, you know, a mask off moment that she actually is this fascist that she seems like. But, you know, in the early, in the early episodes, it's much closer to, oh, you know, she's a woman in a man's world and, and this is tough for her too. And she's trying to figure out, she's trying to chart her path. And then you get her out there and you give her some torture headphones and things go

a little bit sideways. What do you think changes at all? Or is it just the same person in a different context when it gets, when Deidre gets out in the field? Well, we had the parallel experience in the room Because when we were writing her We're like, okay, she's, you know, all the things you say She's the underdog and there's only one other woman in the room And they're treating her like shit

And she's doing a better job than anybody else And nobody's paying attention And we're like rooting for her all the way through And then we got to like, Farrex and we're like, oh my God We're like, okay, well, that'll be cool If we can make the audience feel the way that we feel then that's super cool. So yeah, we shared that revelation in the room, right?

Yeah, I imagine that, I mean, without getting too deep into the real world applications of sound torture, the headphones was just like that kind of like Oculus set that they put on Bix. I was like, sadly, I've seen a lot of torture in films. I don't think I've ever seen, let's have children screaming into this, one frequency. It's stunning.

That's the theater of the mind, right? Yeah. But I feel like a lot of our love for the show and goes back to something you said before, or it's come up already twice in the conversation when, oh, someone said electric floor and then you're off to the races. Bo calls you in the middle of the night and says, what if he suggests their children to get married? And that's kind of like thunderbolt moment when you've been chasing the best version,

the new version, the unsurprising version, but then there's a clarity, right? when you know what it is. And I think that that's what, as an audience, you can feel that same electricity. Yeah, you know. I mean, you know when it, I mean, there are things and I've got things in the show and I've got things in movies and stuff

that are worked at and they work and you've pushed them through and you've detailed them enough and you've hidden what's wrong about it and you've covered up the rust and you put enough, you know, uh, uh, body putty on it to make it work.

And it, And it passes muster. But hopefully those are as few and far between as you can possibly make. Because what you're really looking for is that natural feeling of something that just drops. And you just go, oh, my God, that's natural. That's perfect pitch. Everything. And you know that like, okay, there it is.

Everything else that's going to go into making this work is just effort and taste. It's not going to be, I don't have to find it. There it is. And that's what you're trying to have a whole, you know, you try to do everything that way. It's not always that way, but you're trying to get there. One of my favorite things about the show is that not only do we get moments like that, but we have devoted time to cereal eating cereal with his mother. Now, we are on your side.

We love these scenes. But just for the sake of an exercise, if you were to pretend we were like villainous Sith Kathy Kennedy, she's not like this, but if we were and we were like, what are we doing with these scenes? This is a show about a rebellion and we need more action. Can you just, for the purposes of the exercise, make the case why those scenes are so vital? No.

Even better. I have a follow-up question, though. How come I can't go five feet without seeing Baby Yoda plush toys everywhere, but I can't get cereal cereal in the stores yet? There was a cereal that looked like that when I was a kid. Yeah, it's like cocoa pumps or whatever. I never, I didn't, I had no hand in that, and the cereal of the blue milk.

When that showed up in Dale, the set, obviously, everything else. I mean, every, how this, every inch of the set and what she's wearing and what he's wearing and what they're saying, all the rest of it. But no, the cereal and the blue milk and the stuff was a surprise to me. And it's really, though, everybody directed those scenes really well. Everybody, everybody got what that was about. And Catherine is just, I don't know, they're kind of my favorite.

So when you were in pre-production in the room and then in production on this, I mean, the degree to which this is, how big a swing this was, I don't think was even, we didn't realize in terms of the scale and the scope and just for us as fans, what you have done creatively with this franchise and the direction you've put it in and the doors you've kicked in for it going forward. Now that you are about to embark on the back half of it with a company that has now seen the results that's been received, has there been any change? change in the conversation, like, is there excitement? Is there a different level of confidence that Star Wars can do this? You know, because in a way, what's kind of amazing to us is it was a leap of faith on everyone's part that, like, this is also Star Wars. I mean, we, you know, we have money issues, you know, I mean, money's an issue. So we, you know, there's things we'd like to do that are just too expensive and, you know, so there's all those issues. But no, not not text-wise or tonally or anything. We don't have any

instructions or anybody anybody, you know, people watch what we do. They pay attention to what we do. They certainly pay attention to how we do it. We try to be as incredibly disciplined as possible. I mean, there's shows out there that have no budgets, you know, that are just like, you know, they're just

or shows that are, I've come apart and come back together. We're super-tucked away. We eat every single piece of the cow. We're using everything that we get. No, I haven't had any. Nobody's Nobody's come and said, don't do this. I was curious whether or not anything about whether it's the reception to the show

or watching people watch the show has influenced, not in a concrete way, obviously you can't reveal, has influenced the writing of the second season. Because it's a unique experience, I think, for you, where it's like, you didn't do part two of Michael Clayton after everybody started quoting Michael Clayton. That's a really, that is an interesting question. I don't think so. It's been just fascinating to watch the conversations. I mean, it's just so new and it's such an unusual experience.

I don't know if you can even imagine. I mean, it's six weeks, and, you know, I'm not on social media, but I'm a voyeur, and I go on and I peek and I look at stuff, and why wouldn't I? I mean, anybody who says that they're, I mean, I'm trying not to do it obsessively. people flag stuff and they send it to me but I mean even people just having super arguments about the show is just fascinating to me

I love what they do I think I'm trying to think if there's anything to be influenced I'm I uh I think one legit thing that I that uh you know we don't have a lot of we have not dealt with a lot of creatures and aliens and things like that on the show I think we there will be some coming up

and we are all through we have a we have a pretty organic approach to it and we certainly want to be in the Star Wars universe. I think we've been a little shy on some of that. I think that's a legit thing that has entered my mind a little bit as we've gone forward. But not really. No.

It's fascinating to watch all these people try to, not appropriate, but try to adopt the politics of the show for their particular politics because we're not trying to be contemporary in any sense. Anything that is contemporary

is just the fact that people aren't looking at history. I mean, slavery, colonialism, imperialism, oppression, frustration, political. I mean, these are 3,000-year-old issues. You just go back through every single piece of history, and you can just drop the needle anywhere you want. And that's what we're kind of doing. That's the beauty of doing a show like this. So we can just cherry-pick everything from, you know,

in recorded history, a political history. It's all there. So it's interesting to watch people try to pin us down contemporary. temporarily. But no, I don't think I've, I haven't changed anything really specifically that we're doing other than just trying to keep our standards up and not get lazy. So, Tony, thank you again for this time. We have to let you go. But I know that two episodes left in this season, you're about to go to London. You got 12 more. I think I know your answer to this, but I'm going to ask anyway, anything you'd like to tell us and listeners about the next two weeks. Yeah, what did they make it in the jail? Anything, anything you'd like to prepare us for? The jail is the writer's room.

The jail is the writer's room. They're building the second season in the writer's. That's right. That's what they're doing. That's right. Bo Willemann hasn't worn shoes in three years. Not to get fried. I want to get flavored.

And that's my goal. Yeah. I would only say this, that if people don't go on the way, I mean, we're control of our story. You know, we're in control of it. And I saw some people say, oh, it looks like people aren't really,

you know, it's chaotic. All these characters are going on. There will be convergence. we will round out. We have some place that we're going to. I think it'll be a satisfying, a satisfying place to finish and a pregnant moment to continue.

That's the plan. We wish you nothing but good luck. Continued success off in London season two. Please know that as a reward. I want you guys to stop watching any other shows now. I just think we have. You've ruined us. We have. Have you noticed?

We're talking about like deadline news headlines. It's really always pleasure and perhaps we will do a final a final wrap-up if we arrange all that. That would be really great. Thank you so much for coming back. Chris and I are going to stay in the Zoom just for the next couple weeks. We'll just be here. You drop in whenever you can.

We're ready. I'm going on program. So are we. Take care, Tony. Thank you so much for coming by. Thank you. Bye-bye.