As we await the final season of Andor, streaming on Disney+, the cast including Diego Luna, Adria Arjona, Genevieve O’Reilly, Stellan Skarsgård, and more, reflect on their characters, their journey so far and excitement for the road ahead. From left to right in the above picture….
Denise Gough (Supervisor Dedra Meero)
Denise Gough relishes another chance to explore the twisted mind of Dedra Meero, an Imperial loyalist who is as severe as she is smart.
“All her complexities…playing that is so much fun,” Gough says, allowing her to examine the morally gray character. On the surface, Dedra is villainous, yet believes herself to be firmly in the right. “She’s very sophisticated. She was never going to be just good or bad,” Gough says.
In Dedra’s own mind, “she’s a hero,” Gough adds. “Everyone in this story is the hero of their story, which I think is a sign of great writing. That’s a great ensemble. To me, everybody is the lead in their story.”
When we meet her in Season 2, a year has passed since Supervisor Meero was nearly crushed by the crowd at Ferrix, saved at the last moment by Syril Karn. As we embark on the next chapter in her story, one year later, her loyalty to the Empire and her preoccupation with rebel activity continue to dominate her decisions. “She’s still obsessed with finding Axis,” Gough notes. “She will never stop looking for Axis. Ever.”
Stellan Skarsgård (Luthen Rael)
As Luthen Rael, Stellan Skarsgård portrays the literal duality of the rebel experience. By day, he’s a mild-mannered shop keeper selling antiquities from his beautiful gallery, hiding in plain sight among Coruscant’s elite. In a twist, it’s this persona that’s his disguise, not his incarnation as a rebel operative. When he removes the wig and the finery, Luthen Rael is ready to take on the Empire, one covert strike at a time.
“Luthen is quite an interesting character,” Skarsgård says. “There’s a lot of contradictions in him, which attracts me because I really don’t like the idea of good and evil people. I think it’s an incredibly dangerous way to look at humans, so I’m grateful for the ambiguity of the character. He lives a kind of double life — or maybe triple life, we don’t know.”
As we saw in Season 1, Luthen employs a ruthlessness to his approach to rebelling that sometimes sets Mon Mothma and others on edge, growling with a ferocity that betrays the intensity of his conviction. But, as always, it’s in service to the cause. “He says at one point, ‘I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them.’ And the tools of the enemy are pretty brutal,” Skarsgård notes. “[Luthen is] a different kind of hero.”
Genevieve O’Reilly (Senator Mon Mothma)
Genevieve O’Reilly has played Mon Mothma, the senator from Chandrila, off and on for over 20 years, but nothing could fully prepare her for the richness of her deeply-personal journey in Andor. In Season 1, Andor began to examine the personal sacrifices Mothma makes to fund and support the burgeoning rebellion. In the final episodes, we watched as she introduced her teenage daughter to an oligarch’s son, a distasteful reception that was necessary to help cover her financial difficulties.
“I felt sick with complication for Mon Mothma the woman and Mon Mothma the rebel,” O’Reilly says of reading the next chapter of her journey in Season 2, which will build on Season 1’s exploration of Mon’s personal life. “The structure of the season is really interesting. I’ve never done anything like that before,” she adds. Each three-episode arc is separated by a year, allowing for a rapid evolution of characters and events driving toward the Mon we know from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — a calm, dignified leader on Yavin 4. “You can really feel the march of a rebellion, the encroachment of the Empire. Each jump we make…[the Empire got] more smothering. More electric. More dramatic.”
While this season will revisit scenes from Mon’s home life as the mother of Leida and wife to Perrin Fertha, O’Reilly is most curious about exploring Mon’s rise in the Rebel Alliance. “The Mon that I am deeply interested in is the emergence of a leader,” she says. “There are times in the season where I was excited to see her emerge. And there are times in the season where I was surprised at the genuine weight of rebellion and the pain of that. Her arc was different than I thought. But now that we’ve gone through it and filmed it, I know her a little bit differently.”
Diego Luna (Cassian Andor)
Cassian Andor was largely on the run for Season 1, and while the threat of the Empire continues to loom over everything in his life, Season 2 gives star and executive producer Diego Luna a chance to explore his character’s personal life with more depth.
For Cassian, two of the most influential characters in the series are Bix Caleen and Luthen Rael. “Who’s behind this character you know?” Luna asks. “Bix has been there as a friend. She represents that. She’s family, she’s love, she’s home. And Luthen is the teacher. Luthen is the one that grabs his hand and says, ‘Look, there’s a world out there and you can be a part of that.’ I think Luthen represents hope in Cassian’s life.”
Season 2 picks up one year after Maarva Andor’s funeral on Ferrix, a somber event that led to a revolt against the Empire. In the aftermath, Bix, Brasso, and Wilmon Paak are fugitives, and Cassian has been firmly set on his path to join the rebels. As a result, when we meet Cassian this season, he’s a changed man.
“Where we left Season 1 has nothing to do with where we start Season 2,” Luna hints. “He’s working for Luthen’s team and he’s been quite successful. He’s been given a lot of responsibilities now, so it’s far from that guy that was difficult to trust, difficult to read. Right now, he’s a man on a mission.”
And we still have four more years to explore Cassian’s journey, which gives the character plenty of room to grow. “He still doesn’t feel part of something bigger, you know? I think he still has a lot of doubts and he’s still trying to figure things out,” Luna adds. “There’s a long way to go for him to become the Cassian Andor we meet in Rogue One. There’s still a lot that needs to happen to him and a lot of things he has to witness.”
Luna can’t wait for audiences to revisit Rogue One when the season is through, with a fresh perspective on Cassian’s tragedies and triumphs. “It’s quite exciting to think about the speech he has in Rogue One, because after watching Season 2, you’ll understand what he means. When he talks about why he’s there, what he has done, and why it’s worth it to give it all for the cause.”
Adria Arjona (Bix Caleen)
When we last saw Bix Caleen, she was a woman broken by the Empire’s brutal and invasive torture tactics. Along the four year journey this season, star Adria Arjona promises we’ll see the character’s evolution in more depth as she tries to claw her way back from the brink. “The evolution of these characters is pretty intense,” Arjona says. “You see so much growth and so much destruction happen over the course of these couple years.”
Although the series traces the creation of the Rebellion, every character in the series is also waging their own personal rebellion, Arjona says. For Bix, much of that struggle is happening emotionally. “A lot happened to her in Season 1,” Arjona says. “And she wants to be strong and she wants to be tough. It makes her rebellion internal and self-destructive.”
Alongside her fellow Ferrixians, we’ll find out what happened to Bix after she left her home world behind. “Bix and Brasso and Wilmon are refugees, like so many people all over the world for so many centuries,” she adds. In addition to real-world influences, Arjona owes much of her gratitude for Bix’s DNA to creator and executive producer Tony Gilroy, she says. “He is a brilliant writer. No one’s written for me like Tony has.”
Ben Mendelsohn (Director Orson Krennic)
Donning the white cape of Director Orson Krennic once more, Ben Mendelsohn joins the Season 2 cast to reprise his role from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Ambitious and cunning, we reunite with Krennic four years before the Death Star is unleashed, when he’s already a high-ranking official in the Empire striking fear into the hearts of those who make his acquaintance.
“Once you have that cape on and you are in the world of Star Wars…it tells you a lot about what to do,” Mendelsohn says of getting back into character. Gilroy’s Michael Clayton remains one of Mendelsohn’s personal favorite films, so he was elated to join the cast and get the chance to work with Gilroy. “Tony’s writing is superb,” Mendelsohn says. “You look at the scenes, they tell you everything. I love being on set, when the whole machine is all working together. It’s like being at a church…you know, it’s beautiful.”
Faye Marsay (Vel Sartha)
Mon Mothma’s cousin, Vel Sartha, straddles the line between scrappy rebel and polished Chandrilan socialite. For actor Faye Marsay, that’s been a delicate balance. “I think in Season 1 we saw, yes, she was a rebel. And, yes, she was very strong and her mind was on the rebellion. But, you saw her softness.” When Vel wasn’t leading the Aldhani heist or tracking targets for Luthen, she was reconnecting with Mon and stealing quiet moments with her girlfriend, Cinta Kaz. “We saw a side of Vel that was, I think, quite vulnerable.”
In keeping with the theme that each character is dealing with their own personal and private rebellion, Vel’s fight is partially to break free from her privileged upbringing. “She’s from a wealthy background, a very traditional — one might say conservative — background. And I think that never worked for her,” Marsay says. “There’s a real disconnect from her upbringing. She didn’t want to be a part of that world. Obviously, she’s gay and I think her rebellion is about finding a place that she’s comfortable in a world that reflects who she is.”
The only family members we’ve seen her interact with are Mon and Leida Mothma. But off screen Marsay is grateful to be a part of the larger Star Wars family. “I feel very lucky to be a part of the family. She’s compelling. On the one hand, you could look at her as just kind of a cold soldier for the rebellion. But there’s real heart there to Vel. and There’s a real conflict inside her about who she is and what she needs and what she wants.”
Read the article in full at StarWars.com including updates from Kyle Soller (Syril Karn), Kathryn Hunter (Eedy Karn), Joplin Sibtain (Brasso), Muhannad Bhaier (Wilmon Paak), Varada Sethu (Cinta Kaz), Forest Whitaker (Saw Gerrera) and Alan Tudyk (K-2SO). The three-episode premiere streams April 22nd in North America and April 23rd in the UK & Europe only on Disney+.
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