‘Andor' creator Tony Gilroy on the show's greater impact on the ‘Star Wars' universe and how much K-2SO is enough

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2 days ago

Fresh off writing and producing the critically acclaimed Disney+ series Andor, Tony Gilroy has earned a well-deserved victory lap. He managed to create a Star Wars project that delivers a darker, more mature, and grounded look at the Rebellion — something deeper than anything previously seen in the franchise — while also winning over the notoriously divided fan base.
Now that he's finally stepping away from the Star Wars universe — a journey that began when he reworked Rogue One into a fan-favorite — Gilroy is making the FYC rounds, celebrating Andor's critical success and saying goodbye to the galaxy far, far away … at least for now. While attending an awards event at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, he spoke with Gold Derby about Andor's influence on the franchise's future, how a dream project nearly turned into a nightmare, and why just a little K-2SO can go a long way.
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Gold Derby: Are you sure you're going to set down? Have you been thinking about it with all the accolades and the wildly enthusiastic response?
Tony Gilroy: It's six intense years, and 10, sorta, years in total. It's 26 hours of Star Wars. Leave the campsite cleaner than you found it I mean, really. I think I'd never say never, but I'm not doing that next.
has long lived in the fairy-tale realm, but shifts it toward allegory — something George Lucas hinted at with the original film's commentary on Vietnam. What's exciting about making that kind of paradigm shift, and do you see it influencing future stories beyond ?"
The mandate was to open a new land, right? The mandate was to try to do something really different with a different grammar and different vocabulary and a different ethic and really go for it. And we showed a lot of work before we started and they were like, 'OK, we're eager for that.' It was never meant to turn an entire continent around or change everything. It was never meant to be in contrast with anything else. It was meant to be its own thing and to open the possibilities for all kinds of other things. I'd get very disappointed when people try to benchmark it against the other shows that they have and try to make a conflict. That's always annoying, and sometimes more than annoying.
It's a losing game, too.
Yeah, and it's just really annoying. But the other thing is, the lesson that I wouldn't want people to slavishly say, 'Oh, well this is what we have to do now. No, if there's any lesson, it's like swing away and see what you can get away with.
In receiving the response to the show now that it's all out there, is there something that's been a favorite aspect of yours or a surprise element that you've enjoyed in the audience reaction?
The scale of the show and the scale of the reaction is so huge. I think the best answer to your question is that I think if you're a creator and you're honest enough — and people say they don't read reviews and other things, but I always liked test screenings, but I hated focus groups. Test screens were always valuable, but focus groups, there was always somebody who thought they didn't have an audience and they took over. I find social media commentary to be so vast and the things that are wrong with it are actually good for you to listen to. And to watch people — you can ignore the ones you think are useless and you can focus on [the constructive] but so many people, all of us, our community on the show, we're all in awe of the level and depth of conversation about things that we thought no one would ever get, or things that we didn't even really fully realize we were putting in there. The depth of interest and comprehension and the depth of analysis, politically, artistically, it's staggering to us. It's weird that it's very weird, that. It's a new development, it's a new thing
At the tail end of the second season you have so much fun with security droid K-2SO. Did you ultimately wish you had more room to explore the Cassian-K-2 two relationship?
No. I think I was a stern taskmaster about that, and I'm sure … I mean, the audience was impatient for it and Alan [Tudyk] was impatient for it and Lucasfilm was impatient for it. Everyone was impatient for it. I knew from the very first day I started the show when he would be coming in, and I knew it could be great if he came in the right way and we could really do it. I also worked on Rogue [One] enough to know how difficult the character he is to carry around, as a plot. As much as people love him, he's very difficult to tell a story with. It's a very big piece of luggage to carry around into a story, so it's very problematic. So I just kept telling people, 'Please wait. Please wait.'
What was that day that you were working and you thought 'We're making what I wanted to make, I'm making ?'
Honestly? I mean, I was hoping all through COVID that the show would go away. I was terrified of the show, when I finally realized what we were into. Still during COVID, my brother John moved to New York and we set up a cutting room, a COVID cutting room on 86th Street. It's a couple blocks from my house. We had an assistant that I never even saw! He was in the basement, no one could talk to anybody. He was like Igor in the basement. And Johnny and I tested four times a week and the dailies started to come in that Toby was shooting after we started. And I think it was about week three or four when — my brother's a pretty hardcore coconspirator, and he finally just said, 'Dude, give up. This is happening. It's great. It's going to be great, and start to enjoy yourself.' And I turned around when the dailies really started coming in and I started seeing what the actors could do. I was like, 'Oh my God! Well, I'm on this ship and it's launched and it can be really cool.' But I think you go back and forth between confidence and fear all the time.
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