Nicholas Britell talks to TheWrap.com about scoring the music for the Disney+ Andor series and how we went about avoiding the shadow of John Williams.
Britell’s previous work has tended toward the indie world, including Barry Jenkins’ films “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk” and his limited series “The Underground Railroad.” He’s gone more mainstream with Adam McKay’s “Vice” and “Don’t Look Up” and he entered the world of Disney with 2021’s “Cruella.” But “Andor” is something else entirely because it’s part of the “Star Wars” universe. That’s a terrain inescapably tied to the themes John Williams wrote for the original trilogy and the scores he wrote for all nine features.
“From when I was probably 3 years old, I was the biggest ‘Star Wars’ fan,” Britell said. “But when you get the opportunity to work on a ‘Star Wars’ project, how do you even relate to this epic John Williams sound that is part of the world’s culture at this point? The only way I was able to enter the universe was in the first conversation I had with [creator] Tony Gilroy, when he reached out and said he wanted to do something completely different.”
With “Andor” taking place before the first “Star Wars” movie, Britell said he was freed up to come up with a distinct sound that could set the stage for the world of Williams’ score without having to ape it in any way. “I felt, OK, I can attempt that,” he said, laughing. “And it was exciting for me, because metaphysically and spiritually, there’s a feeling that you want this to have. But on a practical level, it had to be something unique to this story.”
He immediately thought of “retro analog synthesizers” for a sound that reminded him of the past. But before he could really write the underscore, he and Gilroy had to figure out the sound — and, crucially, the music — of the different planets on which the series would take place.
“My starting point for the whole season was the funeral in Episode 12,” he said. “That was the first piece of music I wrote with all of the movements and the choreography, and we hired musicians to perform it on set. That was the first thing I played for Tony in the hope that we could find a sound for that world. And once we figured out the on-camera music, I began utilizing that as a starting point for the score.”
But that was just one location for a season that jumped between a number of different worlds. “It happened multiple times throughout the season,” he said. “I remember starting to work on Episode 8 and realizing that there was nothing I had written up to that point that would work on that planet. We would get to a new planet or a new storyline, and I would realize I didn’t have anything that would work. I would say, ‘Tony, I need a little time to come up with a new sound palette for this planet.’”
For the main theme, Britell said, “I wanted it to feel like a question mark, more than the incredible ‘Star Wars’ fanfare,” he said. “It starts with this very quiet, low synth pulse, and then slowly elements come in and the sound starts to build. Then there’s this sudden crescendo, but it’s over almost as soon as it’s begun. It’s only 35.2 seconds long, and it’s really trying to figure itself out. In a sense, it’s a metaphor for Cassian [Andor].”
Britell and Gilroy also had to figure out which arrangement of the theme to use in the opening credits. “I had tried a few different ideas of how to orchestrate the main theme,” he said, “and I remember saying, ‘Tony, what if we didn’t have to choose? What if we did all these ideas?’ We had the insane idea of doing 12 different evolutions of the theme, one for each episode, which was its own massive undertaking. By the time I got to Episode 9, I was like, ‘Wow, did I really say we were going to do 12 different main titles?’”
Read the interview in full at link below, and watch the first season of Andor on Disney+ now.
Image: Getty Images
