Jade Fabello, writing at StarWars.com, talks to Alan Tudyk, the voice and actor behind K-2SO, about bringing the towering Imperial droid to life in the second season of Andor, some ten years after the actor said “hello” to the character during the filming of Rogue One.
After the terrifying Ghorman Massacre that unleashed the full might of the Empire’s KX droids, K-2SO, the fan-favorite reprogrammed Imperial droid, made his proper return to the screen in Andor Season 2, episode 9.
It has been a full decade since actor Alan Tudyk first said hello to the character during the filming of Rogue One. And over the years, Tudyk has had many opportunities to see how much the character means to fans.
“The neat stories that I always just love to hear are the ones between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons,” he says. “K-2 and Rogue One are things that families connect over. Although for kids, ‘I’m like, God, wow, kids are growing up fast because everyone dies.’ For me, it would’ve been traumatizing, but I was a kid from the seventies.”
The Childishness of an Imperial Droid
“I think a lot of K-2 is me,” Tudyk says. “I’m somewhat childish even at 54 years old, and I always saw K-2 as a child.
“You know how children are always doing and saying things that they shouldn’t? Online, you may see videos where a little kid will so sweetly say, ‘Mom, your mustache is so much prettier than dad’s’” he says with a laugh. “That’s the kind of childlike quality that K-2 has.”
There’s a scene early in Rogue One where the rebel council decides Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) will travel with Tudyk’s K-2 to the next objective on the planet Jedha. K2 looks directly at Jyn and delivers the line, “That is a bad idea. I think so and so does Cassian.”
In Tudyk’s head, he recalls the line being: “‘No one likes you. They all talk about you when you are not in the room. And then when you come into the room, they stop. And then when you leave, they start talking again,’” he laughs. “I had actually convinced myself in my head that was what was in the movie until I watched it again before I did Andor.”
The year, according to Tudyk
Andor Season 2’s structure has year-long in-story gaps between every set of three episodes. That means that most of K-2’s life as a reprogrammed droid occurs between his proper introduction in episode 9, and his re-appearance in the final arc. Tudyk has his own head canon for how he likes to picture that year of K-2 and Cassian’s life.
“I always saw K-2 as having a learning period from when he was reprogrammed,” he says. “I think it was a lot of slow trust that had to be built a little bit.”
Much of K-2’s screen time in Andor is shared with Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and fellow rebel Melshi (Duncan Pow). But, if for some reason the trio were in a trust fall situation, K-2 would catch Cassian, but he would not catch Melshi, Tudyk quips. “He just wouldn’t,” he says. “Not because he doesn’t like him. He would just think it was amusing.”
Read the interview in full at StarWars.com. Stream Andor on Disney+ now.
The post Alan Tudyk on K-2SO appeared first on Jedi News.
