Jamie Stangroom talk to Alistair Petrie about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, reshoots & the upcoming Cassian Andor Disney+ series.
In this video Rogue One actor Alistair Petrie talks about playing General Draven in Rogue One, getting the Star Wars comic book treatment (Spoilers) and what he knows about the new Cassian Andor series coming to Disney+.
This is an episode of ‘These Are The Actors You’re Looking For’, the Star Wars interview series on The Geeknd. More Episodes
Here are some quotes from the interview; on the Cassain Andor Disney+ series….
“No. It’s possible, of course it’s possible because of the role I play in the film. I’m respecting the film makers actually, I’m not trying to be clever in terms of – oh I would love to say something but I can’t, I’ve signed an NDA or whatever – It’s nothing to do with any of that. If the storytelling allows me to appear in it then I would in a heartbeat because I love the personal and the possibilities of the stories they can tell around Diego’s character, so we’ll see.”
“I know everyones got an opinion on the films – which ones best, which ones don’t work. They can’t be perfect but the intention behind them was very high and mighty and full of integrity, you can’t please everyone all of the time but I am pleased to say that Rogue One is pretty high up on people’s list, it makes me really proud. People either love it or begrudgingly love it or some people hate it. Either love it or hate it, that’s totally fine. That’s what keeps us all fresh.
Reshoots on big budget films are inevitable, when you’re shooting something on such a massive scale that once you put everything together there can be imbalance – which you cannot predict. I don’t know this for a fact, my self position is that Disney see the first cut and go – we need to redo that or add in a scene there. Some extra bits were added, a couple of things then once you looked at another cut certain things seemed out of balance so they needed to change the tone of a scene. It was never case that this film’s a mess and we need to get someone else in to redo it, that’s the simplest of narratives to push really.
Nobody turned up for the reshoots and thought “oh god, we’ve got to somehow fix this”, it was never about that. They knew it was good and then they thought we can make it even better.
In Gareth was absolutely tied up in the special effects and Tony came in, having done a pass on the script to punch up various things, and because he’s also a phenomenal director he then directed the bulk of those reshoots. It’s Gareth’s film, it is directed by Gareth Edwards, it’s Gareth’s film and egos didn’t start clashing about that.
We had a running gag – one of the very big setup scenes with Felicity’s character being brought in in shackles. It kept getting tweaked. We shot that scene – some of which appears, some of which doesn’t even appear in the film – various versions of it, and there was a slight running gag on set that we’re making a film called ‘Star Wars Scene 16’ because we kept doing it over and over again! And I’m sure they did a composite of various different takes from various different scenes shot over a year! The smarter people amongst could probably watch it and go – they definitely look a year older than they did in that previous shot!”
