Elizabeth Dulau, the actress behind Andor’s Kleya Marki who is the assistant to antiquities dealer Luthen Rael, breaks down her biggest scene yet on the second season of the Disney+ show.
Kleya is more than a mere shop assistant. Played to perfection by Elizabeth Dulau, the character is actually a key component of the emerging rebellion, and Kleya’s steely gaze could pierce even Darth Vader’s black armor.
While at this point it is practically impossible to imagine anyone else in the role, it turns out Dulau was actually a last-minute replacement for the replacement to the original actor cast for the part. “We had two other actors who had come on and they both got bigger jobs so begged be released,” reveals Andor creator Tony Gilroy. “So we needed a Kleya, and Nina Gold [in casting] put up Elizabeth Dulau in front of us and said, ‘She has no credit. She just graduated from RADA like 15 minutes ago. She’s never done anything.’”
They brought in the freshly graduated Dulau, and, as Gilroy tells it, “Oh my Lord, just from the first minute!”
In fact, Gilroy notes that he and Skarsgård still can’t stop talking about his scene partner. “He’s just in awe of her,” Gilroy says. “She never gave him an inch, not from the very first audition. I don’t know how she has that kind of courage or that kind of spine. She came into the audition, and she was just a wall to him all the way through. Holy cow!”
According to the creator, there’s nothing Dulau can’t handle. “She’s bulletproof. We do not have one bad minute of film on her anywhere. She’s like a Meryl Streep, natural, mind-blowing actor. So you start to write into her as we go through season 1, and then more and more and more and more and more. She can do anything.”
All of both Dulau and Kleya’s skills, determination, and resolve were on display in a pivotal episode 6 scene in which she forced a frightened Lonni (Robert Emms) to join her as cover while she attempted to remove a listening device from Davo Sculdun’s gallery while none other than Sculdun (Richard Dillane) and Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) hovered nearby. It was a moment as tense as they come, and naturally, Kleya delivered, recovering the device… even if it meant bloodying her hand in the process while also managing to keep Lonni calm (which was no small feat in itself).
Entertainment Weekly tracked down the galaxy’s biggest badass and spoke to Dulau about Kleya’s finest moment so far. She explains why filming the scene was ever harder than it looks on screen.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So I really feel like you are the season 2 MVP. I became obsessed with Kleya this season.
ELIZABETH DULAU: Thank you so much. I was blown away by the character arc that Tony wrote for me. When he was first telling me about it, I was just blown away. His support has meant the world. It’s wild!
Let’s talk about this episode 6 scene at Sculdun’s party as you have to remove the bug.
I’m so glad you’re bringing this up. I’ve been dying to talk about this with someone.
Tell me about working with Robert Emms as Lonni in that dance you all do there where you’re forcing him to help you, and he clearly would rather be anywhere else in the world than right there with you.
I love Robert so much. We had a lot of fun working on this scene, and he was just so encouraging the whole time as well. Luckily, the lines for that scene did not change very much at all. And when I first read the script, for that two months before we shot it, I remember thinking, “This is such a technical scene, all the different components of it. I need to be off-book so early so that on the day I am not thinking about the lines.”
I didn’t want to do that thing that some actors talk about where they learn the lines that morning to keep it fresh. I’m so glad I didn’t do that because I would just ruin it. I wouldn’t remember a thing because I think the key for that scene is that Kleya’s mind is in four different places. She’s thinking about the bug that’s hidden underneath the piece, and she’s focusing on that, trying to get it out. She’s thinking about seeming as though she’s not trying to do that at all, as though she’s just flirting with Lonni. She’s also thinking about Lonni and making sure he doesn’t run away and blow her cover. And then she’s also thinking about the other group in the room and keeping track of where they are. So my brain explodes just thinking about that.
And on the day working with Ariel Kleiman, the director, we realized that what we need to do is pick each moment and decide: Okay, in this moment, am I playing it to Luthen across the room? Am I playing it to Lonni? Do you see Kleya thinking about the bug underneath the piece? Do you see her putting on a front? Pick. You can’t play all four of them all at once all of the time. It wouldn’t work.
So you’ve got to pick one and keep switching between them. It was a whole lot, but I’m really glad with how it’s come out. I think you see her switch between just, like, an innocent shop girl to deadly ruthless Kleya, and that was really fun.
I feel like that one scene and the determination of Kleya to remove that device sort of sums her up and tells us everything we need to know about her.
Yeah, absolutely. Especially with the stakes. You see her say in the trailer, “This is do or die,” and me and Stellan while shooting this talked a lot about Nazi Germany and trying to relate it to real world things to make it feel and make it hit home more. And I was imagining in that scene if I was a spy for the allies behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany, and you’ve got the leaders of the Nazi party there, and you’ve got to remove a radio or something — just to try to make it feel real. Because instantly when you talk about it in that way, that sounds terrifying, actually. And that’s the reality that Kleya is in. So that was really useful to try to connect with it more strongly.
Read the interview in full here, and stream Andor Season 2 on Disney+ now.
The post Elizabeth Dulau on Kleya Marki in Andor Season 2 appeared first on Jedi News.
