Sometimes there is no greater thrill than taking a gigantic risk and being rewarded for it. In many ways, that’s what Tony Gilroy, Diego Luna and the cast and crew of “Andor” have experienced over the past year. The darker, more grounded “Star Wars” series was a slow burn for hardcore fans, but ended up with a passionate following that saw it near the top of most Best of 2022 TV critics’ lists, landing a coveted PGA Award nomination and winning a prestigious Peabody Award. With Emmy nominations imminent, Luna and his co-stars have been filming the second and final season which will debut in 2024.
READ MORE: “Andor’s” Genevieve O’Reilly: “I Don’t Think Rebellion Is Pretty” [Interview]
Most “Star Wars” fans known that “Andor” is a prequel to a prequel, 2016’s “Rogue One,” a film set before the Death Star was built for 1977’s “Star Wars Episode VI: A New Hope.” The first season of “Andor” took place over a contained period of time. Speaking to The Playlist last month, Luna clarified the time jumps that will take place over the context of the upcoming second season. More importantly, Luna notes that new structure transforms “Andor” into a “different show” than what viewers have seen before.
“So you have three episodes that are a few days in this year that are really important,” Luna explains. “Then we jump a year, and then you arrive to another week and three episodes happen on that week and you jump another year. And with those jumps, we get all the way to ‘Rogue One.’ So it is a different show because of that. I mean in terms of what it demands of from you and for production and from you as an actor. You have to fill the blank spaces. You have to give that time path, and the character changes dramatically. Well, the first season happens in a short period of time. Here you have an opportunity to create a bigger arc.”
Over the context of our conversation, Luna reveals when he knew “Andor” had reached the artistic potential Gilroy had crafted on the page, how he loves the pace of this television production, how Cassian Andor’s initial meeting with Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard) was one of the trickiest scenes in the entire season and much, much more.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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The Playlist: Congratulations on the show and all the continuing love it’s getting. I asked this question to Denise. I asked this to Genevieve, and I ask this to you. At what point did you realize that this series was something special? That it wasn’t just what was on the page, but it actually turned out to be something more than that.
Diego Luna: Oh, O.K.. Let me think. I think pretty early in the process. I have been involved in this project for close to five years, and I was part of this process even before Tony Gilroy joined. There was the idea of doing this, a few explorations on where to go, and then I would – sadly, it’s way before it was on the page, in fact. It was when I listened to Tony Gilroy’s pitch. When I listened to his idea, he gave me a phone call. I was asked by [Kathleen Kennedy] to have a conversation with him. Kathy was pretty sure he had to be Tony, and they had a great conversation. So then I got on the phone with him, and he was very clear. He said like, “Look, listen, I have an idea. I’ve worked really hard on it. I want to tell you the idea because I don’t want to go write this if you’re not on board, and I mean if we are not a team and we don’t do this together.” And he started telling me his idea, the structure he had, the idea for Cassian’s background, and most importantly, the aim of the series. What was the purpose of the series, and the very ambitious take on basically telling a story about how a revolution erupts. And not just his ideas were very powerful, but he also wanted to take risks. He was hoping to take this as far as possible into doing something very different from anything we had seen before in the universe of “Star Wars.” And that was very appealing. That was very exciting. You don’t want to be part of this universe unless you bring something new. There’s so much already. It’s so important for so many people that if you’re going to come in, you better add something, bring something different. And this was a great opportunity to do that. So it was since then, and then I guess the other time where I went like, “Holy crap, we are actually doing this!” Because at the very beginning, I always had the feeling that something was going to go wrong. Like the moment is going to come where someone’s going to say, “Hey, no, you cannot shoot that way. You cannot keep going.” Because basically, there was no day where we didn’t prioritize just the work, the quality, the tone, and the “edginess.” If that’s a word. I don’t know if it’s a word.
Yeah, yeah. Edginess is a word.
We never took the easy way. The easy option. And every time something didn’t feel right, we gave ourselves the time to back up and try again. The rhythm of the series never played against us, which I mean for a machine this big, for a project this huge, you would think that sometimes you would be just catching up. And it was the opposite. The work was very rigorously done, and everyone brought their A-game. And that’s not easy, and you cannot be expecting that to happen. That comes as, at least to me, that came as a surprise. Wow! The level of everyone around us was pretty remarkable.
When I spoke to Denise, she noted that despite its scope, “Andor” is still a television show. It wasn’t like a movie where you could do 30 takes of a scene. You were still having to move quickly. Was that pace ever too fast for you?
Well, I don’t know if it’s probably that I’ve done so many Mexican films that this felt like we had three times the time. No, no. Obviously, there is a rhythm, right? But to me, if this is going to be the rhythm of TV, I’m signing up to become a TV actor. I never felt rushed on set. I never felt like there was no time for us to explore something different and something new. But also, we were working with a team that actually was not playing around. We were moving fast and with a lot of precision, I would say. And that’s a lot of Tony’s rhythm of work. Tony doesn’t want to lose his time. He’s a director, and he likes hitting it and moving on. And to be honest, when you have such good writing, if everyone brings their A-game, there’s no need for a lot of [takes]. We are doing 12 episodes. Therefore, it’s like the length of four films. But the time we have for each block, which is basically each little film directed by a specific director, it felt right. I never felt like we were missing anything. And it’s quite interesting, and this is where great writing comes from. Every scene that we shot is in the cut.
Did that surprise you when you saw the final edit?
Well, yeah. It’s the first time that happens to me in my life. Obviously, if I generalize something, someone’s going to go, “No, that happened to me once too.” But it, like, the norm? I mean, come on. It’s that so many things stay out of the final cut because then when you put everything together, you realize you don’t need it. Here everything was used. Because from the writing, it was so solid. It was so concise and so well articulated that, yeah, we used everything. We used everything. There are no deleted scenes on the DVD here.