Hi, Tony.
So my first question is why Cassian Andor?
Because if you take any star property and it's it's
populated with such brilliant characters, brilliant world,
there's always such a cult of myriad of potential spin off ideas.
And so when taking Rogue One, what made you go, okay, this this is our guy.
This is who we want to see more of?
Well, it was a Disney idea, but I think it's a pretty
I think it's pretty low hanging fruit.
I don't know.
Is there a character who's sacrificed more?
I mean, is there a character who seems as complicated and as
and I mean, morally complicated,
tactically brilliant,
obviously trusted enough to be sent out on this thing.
I mean, the little pieces of information that we know about him from Rogue One.
Every single one is fascinating.
So I don't know how you could pick a better character.
Yeah.
I mean, because I know that line wasn't never invoked when he said he's been doing
this since he was six years
old. Yeah.
You know, and I wrote that and...
like I don't even know what that means, but it was important.
And then you come back and I mean, but he's just
he's a mean that's an amazing character to come back and deal with.
Yeah. Yeah.
I said, what were your kind of inspirations and influences here?
Because it felt like a real thriller and even had kind of film noir type elements.
Was that the sort of thing you can imagine Jack Nicholson doing in the seventies?
I just wondered where you kind
of grabbed your inspirations from into it because of the tone.
And look, this show we want.
I mean, our overriding mandate for everything is to make it real.
I mean, that's absolutely real, real, real wherever we go.
It was really
Disney and Lucasfilm, really.
They kept saying they wanted to do something really ambitious
and really different.
And, you know, we kept challenging them, you know, in the there's a lot of foreplay
that goes in before you're actually fully committed on both sides.
So we just kept pushing and pushing, oh, we want the production designer
from Chernobyl and we want to do that first scene and we want to do this.
And like they just kept stepping up and saying yes, and we kept doing our job.
And I mean,
I mean, it influences
I'm doing the same thing I've been doing all the way my whole life.
I didn't change my game to do the show.
I tried to find a way to fit in to the show.
What I always do.
And then
you have this enormous opportunity of the scale of it and the length of it.
And that's something I've never had the chance to do before. And
sometimes it feels a little bit overwhelming,
but most of the time it's exciting.
I loved the kind of tone and I this was a challenge to create
something quite new and new and unique and yet still be within the kind of remit
of the Star Wars universe to be basically
to be kind of different and familiar at the same time.
It's a I tell you what it is.
It's a maximally imaginative experience because there's nothing.
Our attitude is, instead of going in a more
there's a this is a overgeneralization, but a traditional Star Wars approach
is, oh, my God, look where we are.
And then this incredible place.
And there are some people down there, let's see what they're doing.
That's kind of in a general said, our attitude is, no, no, no,
let's start here and oh my God, if we happen to see where we are,
then good luck to us or whatever.
But it doesn't matter if you say that we have to design everything.
If I was going to to say, Oh, we're doing a Star Wars publicity junket.
Luke Hull [Production Designer] and I would have
to sit down and go, What is it, Star Wars publicity junket look like?
What is it? What's the equipment?
What's the room like?
We have to do everything we can never say the bakery.
We can never say the bodega. We can never say the library.
Everything has to be built.
So you end up in an automatic.
You end up really deep into a Star Wars aesthetic right from the very beginning,
because everything has to be built from the ground up.
And I think I mean, this alongside of Rogue One was such a political movie,
this political series dressed up obviously in a bit kind of sci fi fantasy.
But do you think sometimes through genre movies we can approach the real world
in the most raw and direct way and which that might be?
Well, it's just liberating.
You don't have to be pinned down by
we can you know, it's because we're doing the thing today.
So all these questions, oh, it's about a contemporary stories
about refugees or it's about Ukraine or it's about this or it's about.
But the beauty of it is that is that all these things that we're experiencing now
are things that are there's a thousand comes through history.
There's always been exiles. There's always been war.
There's always been.
So we if you're if you're doing fantasy
or science fiction or you don't have to be
you don't have to go through the catalog of modern current events.
You have the whole encyclopedia of all history.
I get to cherry pick from every revolution.
I'm picking the best things and the worst things
about every revolutionary movement that I can that I that I know about
the best things, about the winds of war and what happens to people.
And and, you know, we can be with the French Resistance
or we could be with Boudicca or we can be in, you know, we can be with,
you know, two st in the Haitian Revolution.
You could do anything.
I mean, that's the great opportunity.
You're not you're not you have the whole catalog to play with.
I just I'm very fine.
As of all, sometimes actors, if they get to keep
any bits of memorabilia, you know, be it a, you know, a sword they used or a piece
of clothing they wore as the as a soldier, you know, the creator of this,
the peasants would be working kind of behind the lens.
Do you still get to keep any souvenirs, little props or bits that have a very,
very special.
Yeah, I could I could probably be I could probably be much more greedy than I am.
I have one very special thing that I've taken from the show,
and Nick Britell [Composer] has a companion piece to it.
It's a musical instrument.
And that's the least that's the that's that's the most
I'll say about it because it's a spoiler and it comes at the end.
But there's a very huge musical component in the show.
And so Nick and I, that's what I had.
What I took, I took a musical instrument.
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Tony.
That's something that makes the series stick. I keep.