Tony Gilroy, the creator/writer of the Disney+Andor series, discusses Narkina 5 from the most recent three episode story arc, and shares a few details from the second season of Andor.
Sensibility wise, was there any calculus to why [writer] Dan Gilroy got the heist arc and [writer] Beau Willimon got the prison break arc?
Well, Danny and I came in with the same sort of skill set; Beau had a different skill set. Beau is the guy who really beat the shit out of us in terms of the plotting and the whiteboard. We really only did the writers’ room for five or six days, but Beau hadn’t really done any action before. So maybe that had something to do with it. Danny and I have done a lot of stuff like that so it was familiar territory, but it could have easily gone the other way.
Did they help you crack season two?
Yeah, we did the same thing that we did last time. We just did a slightly longer version. I think we did seven days [in the writers’ room], and we brought in another writer as well. We brought in a guy named Tom Bissell, who’s a really strong writer and has a really interesting resume [The Mosquito Coast (2021), Author of The Disaster Artist]. He also has a very powerful interest in Star Wars, and he’s almost a nerd StarWars fan. And as you know, we’re coming into Rogue, so we’re covering four years [in season two]. And a lot of it is canonical, so it was really helpful to have a stronger canonical voice in the room as well.
People continue to speculate about what they’re building on Narkina 5, and until I spoke with Andy Serkis recently, I thought the answer didn’t really matter. So what can you say about those building blocks?
They’re building season two. (Laughs.) It’s the spine of season two. I’ve heard all kinds of things; it’s great. All of the material that the Empire has, I look at everything like, “Economically, how does this work? Who built Scarif? How do you build that? How do you build Eadu? How do you build The Death Star and this armada of ships?” There’s a lot of things that need to be built, and there’s an incredible amount of material. So, to me, what they’re building is not as important as the scale of it. When you go to the Imperial Bureau of Standards where Syril works, you go, “Oh my God,” and he’s just working at the Fuel Purity desk. But that’s what it takes to run this Empire. So the scale of it is really what we’re trying to suggest here.
For the look and feel of Narkina 5, was [production designer] Luke Hull actually inspired by THX 1138 as so many have theorized?
That’s fascinating because when we got into the room, I knew that Cassian goes to prison. But everyone was like, “Oh my God, a fucking prison. How do you do anything new?” Because we were not going to do what anybody had done before. We were just absolutely adamant about that. That’s the rule. So I honestly don’t know who said electric floors first in the flurry of all the shit happening, but someone said electric floors. And all of a sudden, we were like, “Oh my God, what does that mean?” And so we spent the whole day building the prison, and Luke was there with us, building the prison.
We got so crazy about this stuff. A lot of people think the prison is just white, but there’s a billion kinds of white. When we were doing the ISB conference room, we also had to figure out our whites and how much gray was in it. But I think there were pictures up from THX 1138. I know we had pictures up from TheConformist, so I’m sure there were pictures up from THX, of those whites. So it’s a happy convergence, and it’s really pleasing and cool that it’s George Lucas’ first movie. But we definitely went back and looked at it afterwards, and were like, “Oh my God, look at those whites.”
“I can’t swim” is such a heroically tragic moment since Kino (Andy Serkis) led his fellow prisoners to freedom knowing full well that he wasn’t going to make it out. Do you presume Kino was executed shortly thereafter?
I don’t know. He’s not dead. Is he dead? I don’t see him dying [in episode ten].
Cassian (Diego Luna) is on the run with Melshi (Duncan Pow), who was also in Rogue One. Did the idea for Melshi come from just rewatching Rogue and hand picking certain deep cuts that you could reintroduce on Andor?
I love the character. Duncan Pow, who plays Melshi, was a great hang on Rogue, and I just really liked him. So I was just like, “How can we get him back in?” There will be some other things along the way that we’ll do, but the prison just seemed like a great place to show where and how they meet.
Read the interview in full at the link below. Whilst we wait for the second season of Andor, watch the first ten episodes exclusively on Disney+ now.
