Adria Arjona on breaking ‘Star Wars' ground with intense ‘Andor' scenes: ‘I found it really important'
Though Star Wars is about the struggle against the forces of darkness, it usually sticks to cartoonish portrayals of evil: An old wizard cackling as he shoots lightning out of his fingers, or his minion in black armor with a flaming sword. But below them, as Andor repeatedly shows, are millions of bureaucrats and officials carrying out much more recognizable forms of violence and oppression every day. At the beginning of Season 2, one such figure, Lieutenant Krole (Alex Waldmann), even sexually assaults Bix while carrying out an Imperial census on the planet Mina-Rau. The casualness with which Krole abuses Bix suggests it's an everyday occurrence. However, this time, he pays for it with his life. This represents the first depiction of overt sexual assault in a Star Wars story, and neither Arjona nor Andor creator Tony Gilroy (who wrote the first three episodes of the season himself) took that lightly.
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'I felt a great honor for being the one to play it right,' Arjona tells Gold Derby. 'I have many friends and family members who are victims, and I felt like this was written in a way that I wish everybody would react. I wish it were really empowering to do the thing we all wish we could do, but we don't know when we're in that moment. It's kind of the reaction that someone has five days after something happens, when they have the perfect thing to say and the perfect reaction. You know what I mean? So that's sort of how I saw it, and that gave me a lot of power.'
Arjona continues, 'I really held strong to the people I know who have been through this. I brought them with me, in a way, to the scene. At the end of the day, it's part of our history. This show touches so much on really high themes, and it almost feels like we're trying not to look at the reality of it. But the abusive power happens in a galaxy far, far away; it happens here, in Guatemala, in Europe; it happens all over the world. Sometimes we're blinded to it or don't want to see it because it is really scary. So to perform it, I did not take that lightly, and I really put my heart into that scene. I found it really important.'
When Andor started, Bix was just a junkyard dealer on the Outer Rim planet Ferrix. She was trying to get by like everyone else in that hard-scrabble community. Still, anti-Imperial activity intrigued her enough to contact the mysterious Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård). That got her into trouble when the Empire captured her and subjected her to torture. But after joining with her longtime friend Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and becoming part of the growing Rebellion, Bix learns how to fight back against her oppressors. So in the second block of Season 2 episodes, Bix dovetails her recovery from torture with her work in the Rebellion by finding and killing Dr. Gorst.
'You take it personally. I've really fallen in love with the characters that I've played, and I just wanted Bix to win,' Arjona says. 'I was saying, 'Tony, throw Bix something!' Tony really talked me through her entire arc, but that moment with Dr. Gorst, he didn't. He let me read it, and I did. I read it, and oh man, it was just such a big relief that I had for Bix. I counted the days for us to film that scene.'
Throughout both seasons, Andor shows how individuals' choices add to causes greater than themselves, political (like the Rebellion) and personal (like the love that grows between Bix and Cassian).
'As the show progresses, you see the repercussions of everything Dr. Gorst did to her until she has that big moment of revenge and liberation,' Arjona says. 'But as Bix is coming to herself, she's also playing more of a part in the Rebellion, and she wants to be a part of it. That's what takes her out of this whole dark hole, her desperate need to be part of the Rebellion, support Cassian, and be well for Cassian so they can form this beautiful relationship.'
The Andor series finale debuts on Tuesday.
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