Andor, the latest Star Wars series at Disney+, reintroduces many characters that viewers already know as the world introduced in Rogue One is revisited.
The spy thriller takes five years before Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and sees Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor on a journey that will eventually see him turn into the rebel hero that we know.
Shadow and Act recently spoke with Luna, returning star Genevieve O'Reilly and new stars Kyle Soller and Denise Gough about the series.
On diving into Cassian before Rogue One, Luna told us, “I was thinking how far can we go to the man we meet? How much we can say about this person? In Rogue One there are many questions that don’t get an answer, you know, when he refers to a dark past, what was that and how dark was that? For me, was important to find a character in a very selfish moment of his life…a very cynical man that is just trying to survive and doesn’t believe in community and what communities are capable of. It is in a moment where there is not much hope in his life to become anything but what he is already.”
Picturing where the character would be at this point allowed Luna to envision the overall arc for Cassian.
“To get [to] where we find him in Rogue One…it is a very interesting story– the one of someone that has to transit a very specific journey to get to believe in himself in a way where he’s at the end [and] willing to sacrifice everything for a cost,” he continued. “That’s not something you’re born with, otherwise, change wouldn’t be possible. People get there because life takes you there, that’s a story we’re gonna tell you, and it’s a very rich story. I think people are gonna connect with this role because it’s a regular person– it’s just another man’s surviving in a very dark moment in the galaxy.”
O'Reilly said that the show adds context to what previous details the actors and fans alike may have filled in for all of these characters that they love.
She explained, “I certainly do that as an actor…you’ll be given a piece and in order to make some stuff work, you’ll go, ‘OK, well in my mind, she would have done that before she would have done this.’ And so I think we all kind of fill in a narrative background for ourselves, particularly with beloved characters. I think what fans should be comforted by is that Tony Gilroy is at the helm here. He is really interested in fleshing out these characters, and creating a world of intrigue and suspense and where we get to see them in a different light than we have seen them before. I think it will only help us, hopefully, love Rogue One even more. And I hope that when I finish this journey–and I’m only halfway through this version, in Andor, I hope that when I finish it, I get to go back and watch Caroline Blakiston’s version of Mon Mothma, which she made back right back in 1982, and that fills her in for me. I am hopeful that it will help us appreciate those characters even more than we did before.”
