As he films season two, Diego Luna spoke to THR about how the cast and crew of the Disney+ show Andor are not resting on their laurels after the strong response to the show.
So has the critical acclaim for Andor made you regret, to some degree, not doing five seasons like originally planned?
No, definitely not. (Laughs.) We managed to make the series we made because we took the time we took. The thought of making five seasons, I would probably be 54 and still doing this. So it’d be impossible to pretend to be the guy before Rogue One for such a long time, and to be honest, it’s such an intense journey. It’s fantastic, but it’s so intense. And so it’s great to know that we can give everything to it, and by the end, still have something else to give to other projects and to life.
This demands you to go on a journey that doesn’t stop, and that’s the big difference from film. When one process ends, the next one starts right away, and many times they overlap. Even right now, I’m still talking to you about the first season, but I was late because we are shooting the second season and we took a little longer today than usual. When I did promotion at the time that episode six was out, I was still looping episode twelve for Spanish-speaking audiences. And at the same time, I was rehearsing and getting ready for season two. So it’s intense.
Knowing what you know now about the character, does part of you wish you could go back and play Cassian in Rogue One again?
Hmm. I’ve never thought that way because we were able to tell this story by knowing the end. It was always a reference that Cassian gets there, so how far can we go back? How twisted can we make the journey to get there? How many times can he fail before getting there? How conflicted can we make him? How contradictory can we make it? And it was always because we had that reference. So my brain works differently, and I’m more obsessed with sticking to what’s already there.
I remind myself all the time of where the character ends up and what choices I made, because that gives structure to everything I’m doing now. So I’m starting the other way around. It’s less, “Oh, I wish,” and it’s more like, “Okay, because I get there, I can do this.” So that is where I found freedom and all the different ways I can get there. And then I’ll think about what is the most unpredictable one. So, all the layers we didn’t get to see in the film, I get to explore them now. If I had tried them at the time, then I wouldn’t be able to explore them now. So it’s just a perspective kind of thing. The freedom comes from knowing exactly what he does.
Did chills go down your spine when you learned that Cassian helped build the Death Star that would ultimately kill him?
Yeah, they did. I had time to digest that because I’m also involved as a producer. So I had a chance to see it coming, but it’s one of those ideas that’s just brilliant. It’s also not obvious. He spent a quite long time living the experience of that prison without finding it out, and it allows you to wonder, “Holy shit, what are they building? Could this be …?” One of the many things that the show has is very patient writing. There are great ideas that come with patience. So it’s very mature writing, and that was one of those reveals where you were like, “Shit, that’s so smart.”
Is everyone feeling pretty confident right now because season one was so well received?
I don’t think confident is the word. What happened with season one comes with a lot of responsibility, and Tony Gillroy is the kind of writer that won’t let us just relax and celebrate. Tony and his whole team are bringing it. They’re bringing more and more challenges into the mix, and structurally, it’s different. So I don’t think we are confident; I think we are just enjoying it in a way that we didn’t enjoy the first season.
We also have to acknowledge that we shot the first season in the worst times of the pandemic. We were one of the first shows that went out there and started shooting. So that moment in everyone’s life and their families was so emotionally charged. For quite a while, we were told that what we loved doing was not essential, and then we tried to convince ourselves that we were still capable of shooting the series with the level of quality, commitment and vision that we always wanted. So the journey was really tough for many of us, as life was for everyone on this planet. So we are enjoying season two in a different way.
Read the interview in full at the link below, and watch the full first series of Andor exclusively on Disney+ now.
