{"id":300642,"date":"2025-11-22T03:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T03:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/300642\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T03:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T03:36:13","slug":"how-andor-essentially-made-four-movies-at-once-for-season-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/300642\/","title":{"rendered":"How ‘Andor’ Essentially Made Four Movies at Once for Season 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe survived,\u201d said creator, showrunner, and executive producer Tony Gilroy about the lessons carried over from Season 1 of \u201cAndor\u201d to Season 2<\/a>. \u201cWe really survived. And almost absolutely everybody came back production-wise. So we had an institutional memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the process of breaking and filming Season 2 was still a completely different level of challenge<\/a>. Though filmed in four blocks of episodes like Season 1, each three-episode block was separated by an entire year. For a conversation with IndieWire\u2019s Jim Hemphill for our Pass the Remote<\/a> series, presented in partnership with Disney, Gilroy joined executive producer and star Diego Luna, EP Sanne Wohlenberg, writer Dan Gilroy, actors Genevieve O\u2019Reilly and Adria Arjona, composer Brandon Roberts, and supervising sound editor Dave Acord.<\/p>\n

\"LONDON,<\/a> \"Margery<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cI think the beauty of the structure of this second season<\/a> is that that happens in every episode by going to those few days of the year that change everything,\u201d Luna said. \u201cIt\u2019s always crucial. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a single block where something crucial doesn\u2019t happen to every character in this show. The episodes are about those moments. I think, yes, Cassian has to witness so much, has to feel, has to understand he\u2019s capable of feeling, of connecting with someone the way he connects with Bix. He has to lose many things, many battles. He has to understand Luthen. There\u2019s a lot that has to happen to get him to the moment where we see him in \u2018Rogue One.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Wohlenberg said that \u201cthe best day of the shoot for sure\u201d was one of the most memorable moments of Season 2: The wedding of Mon Mothma\u2019s daughter, and Mon\u2019s delirious, slightly out of control dance as she herself is in fact losing control by ordering the death of one of her old friends.<\/p>\n

It was also actor O\u2019Reilly\u2019s very last day of shooting as Mon. \u201cIt did feel from our perspective that we were shooting four films,\u201d O\u2019Reilly said. \u201cAnd so the crescendo of that film for Mon is that moment [of the dance]. There\u2019s so much in those three episodes. You learn about a culture just from my character. You learn about a whole culture, a whole history, an orthodoxy. There\u2019s so much that\u2019s implied within it. As an actor, what\u2019s brilliant is there\u2019s so much to carry. Also, you have, I think, a bit of an idealistic character at that moment [of the dance]. By the end of that film, she has tacitly agreed to the murder of her friend. She had the relationship with Luthen is very murky, and it feels dangerous. And so you can carry all of that into that sequence. It looks like a Renaissance painting because of Luke Hull\u2019s designs and Michael Wilkinson\u2019s costumes and Emma Scott\u2019s hair and makeup. But what you\u2019re examining is the chaos within character, with the chaos and the pain within a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arjona also savored the growth her character<\/a>, Bix, experienced in Season 2. \u201cI think I grew. I grew from Season 1, and I grew in Season 2,\u201d Arjona said. \u201cI think this show has been my greatest school. I mean, I\u2019ve gotten to work with these amazing people and with production design and Michael and Emma. You\u2019re learning from some of the best of the best, and all you can do is soak it in. I also have him in front of me, and that\u2019s probably one of my greatest gifts in this whole show. I have the most generous actor to react from. It really is a reflection of how talented Diego is and how great of a leader he is. In certain scenes, you don\u2019t have to do much. You have a beautiful scene that Tony structures and then you have Diego in front of you. I\u2019m like, \u2018I just get to sit back and really enjoy the journey and savor it.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\"(L-R)\u2018Andor<\/a>\u2018Lucasfilm Ltd.<\/p>\n

Dan Gilroy talked about how iterative something like the Ghorman Massacre on the show is. It involved an 80-page outline from his brother Tony, who then worked on endless back-and-forth revisions that also consider what was financially possible for the production. \u201cIt\u2019s an intense group effort to make something that at the finished product looks, oh, this is like amazing,\u201d Dan Gilroy said. \u201cIt\u2019s just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours, which are enjoyable for me because a writer and I love doing what I\u2019m doing. I think everybody was involved in it on every level enjoyed what they were doing, but it\u2019s a major group effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

The creation of the massacre is one of the most suspenseful moments of the entire series, and it relied heavily on Roberts\u2019 score and Acord\u2019s sound supervision to ratchet it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you can break it down into 30 minutes of building tension,\u201d Roberts said of his approach. \u201cTony was pretty clear, \u2018I want the audience to feel sick and\u2026\u2019 This is not what\u2019s going to happen. This is inevitable, so the idea was how can we make the audience feel sick for 30 minutes leading to that first blaster shot? And so we really leaned into that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, as Brandon pointed out, that the episode is largely a crescendo,\u201d Acord said. \u201cIt starts with the quiet city. There\u2019s that subtle alarm happening. Cassian\u2019s building his weapon, and that\u2019s the pulse that\u2019s set as we build. And then there are beats as you go along. The crowd comes in and they\u2019re chanting. There\u2019s a beat, and then we\u2019re singing the anthem. And then there\u2019s a beat when the first sniper rifle hits. And then the music goes out, and then that\u2019s when the chaos stops. We just keep building and building all these little moments, these beats.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of which goes to show it takes a galaxy\u2019s worth of talent to pull of a series as sweeping and powerful as \u201cAndor.\u201d<\/p>\n

IndieWire\u2019s Pass the Remote series is presented in partnership with Disney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe survived,\u201d said creator, showrunner, and executive producer Tony Gilroy about the lessons carried over from Season 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[53455,171905,64,63,134,5296,171906,90537,171907,171908,2558,171909,427,446],"class_list":{"0":"post-300642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-andor","9":"tag-andor-consider-this-panel","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-interviews","14":"tag-no-ad","15":"tag-no-ads","16":"tag-no_ad","17":"tag-no_ads","18":"tag-noads","19":"tag-pass-the-remote","20":"tag-tv","21":"tag-video"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}