Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy has spoken to Rolling Stone about the first three episodes of the second season, focusing on the relationship between Dedra & Syril, and the hedonistic behaviour of Mon Mothma’s husband, Perrin.
Then you have Syril and Dedra, your Imperials in love — it’s a unique thing this season. Tell me about having these two bad guys and watching the relationship that way.
I never think of them as bad guys, first of all. They’re so juicy. And the idea that two people can be so beholden to an end goal of the Empire, the support of the Empire, and yet have such completely different approaches… They seem so much alike, don’t they?
They both overstepped their boundaries in investigations, and they both appear to be completely beholden to the empire. But in truth, one of them is a romantic and fantasist. Syril is a romantic, really. His inner conversation must be very loud and very extreme.
Dedra, on the other hand, is a zealot. I think her imagination is like a Formula One driver. I think it’s just, keep on going and get it done. It’s so fascinating to me what happens between the two of them and how they interact, and I don’t have anybody else for them to be with.
They started to fall together in our mind in Season One. I think Denise Gough [who plays Dedra] was upset a little bit that we were gonna do that in the beginning, but I think she’s overjoyed now with what she gets to play.
Mon Mothma’s hedonistic husband, Perrin, seemed a bit more rounded out this season. I felt some sympathy for his point of view this time.
Totally. It peeved me the way that people in chat rooms just hated him and talked about how horrible he was. And I thought, that’s not what I envisioned. And I told [actor Alastair Mackenzie, who plays Perrin] that we would do some things to complicate it. Perrin is clearly no saint, and he’s certainly no rebel. But he has a very legitimate point of view and one that I think the show benefits from having.
Why shouldn’t somebody represent hedonism? Why shouldn’t somebody represent pleasure? Why shouldn’t somebody represent living in the moment? What the fuck is wrong with everybody else who’s running around doing all this other stuff? So, getting to do the wedding speech for him, we really worked hard on that. We really wanted that to be special. I’m very happy that’s in there.
My guess is that in this moment in history, people will suddenly find themselves a lot more sympathetic to someone who just wants to live their life while all this crazy stuff is happening in the world.
Yeah, I know. They’ll be going the other way now. We’ll have Perrin suddenly being everyone’s favorite. I also wanted to explain their marriage… If you get married at 15, and it’s two beautiful people and they’re rich and complicated and sophisticated, they’ve been through all kinds of things. Marriage is not a monolith. And the scene where they have the breakfast where he calls out Tay Kolma to her that next morning — I just love the way that Ariel Kleiman directed that scene. I think it’s so beautifully directed. I’m just in awe of the blocking and everything. It was nice on the page, but the two actors and Ari — that scene is just so much about a complicated marriage of people that have had all kinds of trouble, but yet no one else knows their story the way that they do. And the affection that comes from that and the comradeship that comes from that is something that the show benefits from.
Read the interview in full here. Andor Season 2 is streaming now exclusively on Disney+.
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