Tony Gilroy

Tony Gilroy is credited with the screenplay and worked as a writer for the 2016 anthology film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Gilroy stepped in to helm extensive reshoots in place of director Gareth Edwards, bringing a clear creative vision to the film. He said that his superpower was not being a lifelong Star Wars fan, allowing him to take risks such as sacrificing the main characters. He became a fan of Star Wars during his time working on the movie. Gilroy worked with Pablo Hidalgo during production.

Gilroy found it fascinating to work with the film's characters. He tried to make them as interesting as he could, but he felt like the film only had snapshots and glimpses. During production, Gilroy grew close with Diego Luna, the actor who played Cassian Andor in the film. He felt like it was a gift to have Genevieve O'Reilly reprise her role as Mon Mothma in the film. He also liked working with Duncan Pow, Ruescott Melshi's actor. After the film became a massive hit, Lucasfilm Ltd. president Kathleen Kennedy wanted to make more Star Wars movies with Gilroy. However, he had no interest in making another Star Wars project. Despite this, Gilroy continued to think deeply about the beginning of the Rebellion and he believed there was much to explore about Cassian Andor.

By 2018, Lucasfilm had begun developing a television series set before Rogue One which starred Cassian Andor and K-2SO. They would be similar to the film characters Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and they would storm the Citadel. According to Gilroy, the people making the show were trapped in reverence for Star Wars and limited by not having enough money for large-scale streaming. After viewing the script for one of the pilots sent by Kennedy, Gilroy thought the material was fine but hard to sustain over a lung run. He then spent a couple days writing a forensic manifesto explaining why the idea would not work and what Lucasfilm should do instead.

He explained that the show should have a large hole that Cassian Andor climbs out of over the course of five years. Gilroy added that Andor's journey should not involve escapades with K-2SO because it could get repetitive. Lucasfilm thanked Gilroy for his advice, but they said they could never do his idea. After they tried a few other things and everything went cold, they realized they could do the idea due to the advantage of streaming and because they could now afford it. Lucasfilm pulled Gilroy's memo and ambitiously said they wanted to do the idea. The timing was right for Gilroy, but he got tired of things falling apart. Gilroy's idea became the Andor television series, which would explore Andor's backstory, revealing how he changed from a nihilist into a selfless martyr.

When Gilroy joined the project, Sanne Wohlenberg was the producer of record, and she came with the existing pieces of the show. He said the show was made possible by the Star Wars fans who gave money and momentum for the show. He was immersed by the idea of a story that spans from Andor's childhood origin to a five-year history that takes him to a revolution. Gilroy ended up writing five episodes and served as showrunner and an executive producer. He did not worry about deviating from what Star Wars is known for, instead worrying about the storytelling, logic, characters, and tying everything together. Gilroy always wanted to end the series right before the events of Rogue One. There were instances where Gilroy questioned what he had done to his life and whether the show was worth the effort.

Gilroy and the other filmmakers knew what tone and look they wanted before they started working on the show's main components. They wanted everything in the show to be real, which filtered down through the writing, scenes, design, actors, and the camera department. Gilroy chose to make Andor a thriller to dig deep into behavioral problems between people and watch people make difficult decisions. He wanted to make something that is emotionally intense and has the smallest domestic dramas and interpersonal relationships during revolutionary moments. He was fervent on making the show as human and three-dimensional as possible, so he made the characters relatable instead of writing in black and white. Another goal was to expand the audience beyond Star Wars fans and get hesitant people to watch the show.

When Gilroy was creating the 80-page show bible before the writers room, he wrote the first three episodes as a test. He asked Disney what he was able to have in the show. He wanted the show to work on its own as well as be embraced by the Star Wars community. In Gilroy's mind, the first half of the show was called "The Education of Cassian Endor" because the crew wanted to show Andor's origin story by taking him as far away from where he ends up as possible. When Gilroy was conceptualizing Andor's larger story arc, he started to map out a narrative journey for Andor that would feel compelling and complete. This included showing Andor at a low point in his life at a time when the Galactic Empire was gaining power across the galaxy. He used Andor's story to depict the intertwining lives of common people as they orbit around the formation of the Rebel Alliance. He also used his story to show that people do not need to be heroic to be useful in the Rebellion because it needs people willing to "go that extra step."

Gilroy aimed to have Andor learn what the rebellion means through several intake delivery systems without it feeling like a weekly lesson. He wanted to show what happened to the "original gangsters" that started the Rebellion. Gilroy made the show a large-scale character study of people in the Empire and Rebellion. Gilroy figured that people who are not Jedi or Sith would go through incredible events, so he used realistic storytelling to show how regular people are affected by the show's revolution. Gilroy knew what the final scene of the first season would be. According to writer Beau Willimon, the bible's prison section was pretty loose and most of the characters there had not been developed. Gilroy made the prison impenetrable and impossible to escape from.

In November, 2019 in New York, the first writers room session with Gilroy, Dan Gilroy and Willimon only lasted five or six days. Tony brought the show bible and explained his general approach and what he wanted to do with the first season. Tony and Dan had a similar skill set, while Willimon's skill was plotting and using a whiteboard. Willimon said Tony Gilroy's vision had some gaps and details that the writers needed to figure out. Gilroy explained that he wanted to have Cassian Andor escape during a prison sequence at some point. The writers knew they were doing the prison on Narkina 5, though it took them a couple days to figure out how to make it different from other prisons. The prison became antiseptic and brightly lit to make it the opposite of dark and gritty. The writers chose to add a factory floor where the prisoners are building things. They decided that the floor would be electrified, and they realized the guards would need to wear rubber boots. Gilroy chose to have the prisoners be barefoot and walk on metal plates.

The writers developed the characters that appear in the prison, and they knew they wanted someone at the center who would be the face of the prison from the prisoners' perspective. They wanted the character to go from trying to finish their shift to becoming a rebel. They wanted to have an emotional attachment to the actor playing the role. The character eventually became Kino Loy. Gilroy explained his extensive and detailed idea of what he wanted to do with Syril Karn. In an early iteration of the story, the prisoners would steal the boots to escape. Gilroy made sure that every action sequence had a hook that made it distinct, and he said the key to the escape scene was when the kid jumped onto the railing, causing it to break. He said that error was the hook for him to get involved. Gilroy was worried that someone would build a prison based on what he and the crew designed. At the end of the meeting, Gilroy assigned episodes to the writers. Tony Gilroy and Dan Gilroy got to work on the heist arc, which they found familiar due to their previous work. According to Tony, Willimon likely got the prison break arc because he had not worked on action before.

Tony Gilroy wanted the first season to explain why Andor sacrificed himself in Rogue One. He wanted the audience to see from the point of view of every character and feel empathy for them. He was influenced by his knowledge of history. He said the great thing was that he did not have to be contemporary. During the writing process, Gilroy used Wookieepedia and worked with Pablo Hidalgo whom he described as the "curia of the Vatican up there at Lucasfilm." Gilroy was deeply involved in parts of the show that were not being made up. He would ask his questions to visual effects supervisor Mohen Leo and his team. Gilroy was interested in exploring Mon Mothma's mystique and presenting her in a surprising light. He wanted the legacy characters in the first season, such as Mothma and Saw Gerrera, to not provide fan service. Gilroy figured that adding strong alien characters would add new problems that he does not understand. Gilroy wanted the monsters and droids to be completely integrated in the world instead of announcing them in a special shot.

Gilroy used Andor's line in Rogue One about being in this fight since he was six years old as a jumping off point to create the planet Kenari. From the beginning, Gilroy found it important for the planet Ferrix to have an immersive culture. He and the crew spent a long time establishing the planet's social structure, hierarchies, rules, and allegiances. Gilroy wanted the Andor family to have a loyal companion: an ancient salvage droid that worked with them for years. Gilroy started with an old family dog, eventually leading to the creation of the droid B2EMO. Gilroy and his fellow workers loved the prototype when they first saw it at Pinewood Studios. In the beginning, Gilroy found Luthen Rael's secret identity to be tricky and worried that it would be too tacky. He viewed Rael as a talent scout and one of the original gangsters in the Rebellion. He also viewed him as an accelerationist who believes he needs to make his efforts hurt the Empire to bring people to change.

Gilroy was interested in creating the origin story of the children on Kenari, and he thought that young Andor leaving Kenari and adult Andor leaving Ferrix could happen at the same time. Gilroy wanted to explore the orthodoxy and constructs Mothma would have to live with due to becoming senator and getting married at the age of 16. He realized that there was not much canon information on Mothma, which allowed him to make Vel Sartha her cousin. When he was writing Sartha's relationship with Cinta Kaz, Lucasfilm did not say he could not do it and they did not urge him to do it. Gilroy chose to have Bix Caleen be tortured by an auditory device to make it different from other torture scenes in cinema.

In order to give the heroes and villains real complexities, he purposely made Dedra Meero and Syril Karn hard not to root for. When Gilroy and the writers wrote Meero and built her up, they realized she was an underdog trapped in the world and one of the only two women working at the Imperial Security Bureau. Gilroy hoped to make the audience feel empathy for the character. They started rooting for Meero and discussed how to make her strong. When they got to the Ferrix episodes, they realized they did not need to endorse someone else's thinking or sadism, but they needed to get in there and be with Meero to make her a strong character. Gilroy questioned how the Empire got all of their bases and ships built. He said that what the prisoners on Narkina 5 are building is not as important as the scale of the Empire, which the writers tried to suggest with the Imperial Bureau of Standards. Gilroy also said the prisoners are building the "spine of season two." He wanted to bring Melshi back, and he figured that the Narkina 5 prison would be a great place to show where and how Melshi and Andor met. He said that the two comps for Maarva Andor's funeral were the Provisional IRA funeral and the joy and soul of a New Orleans second line funeral procession.

To create a 24-episode series spanning five years, the show's directors worked in blocks of three episodes with Season One having four blocks. In mid-2019, Gilroy called Diego Luna and told him the full plan for an Andor-focused story. Luna was glad that Gilroy's proposal included details that resonated personally with him, and he was convinced by Gilroy's ground-level approach. At the end of the call, Gilroy asked Luna if he wanted to take the risk, and he said he would reprise his role in the series. After Gilroy developed the basic concept for the show, he and Luna met in New York City and discussed what the series would be. Luna was very excited, and Gilroy felt that the actor was a perfect collaborator. Gilroy and Luna discussed aspects of Andor's history that never made it into Rogue One as the scripts were coming together. Gilroy asked actress Fiona Shaw if she would be part of the project, and she was delighted by his enthusiasm. She ended up playing Maarva Andor in the show.

Gilroy called Stellan Skarsgård and told him he had a role for him, which ended up being Luthen Rael. Gilroy showed Skarsgård what he had written about Rael, but did not reveal everything about him. He talked about Rael's inner conflict, which interested the actor. Gilroy removed everyone else from actress Adria Arjona's casting process and then told her she had the role for Bix Caleen. Originally, B2EMO's dialogue would be rerecorded by an actor. Gilroy had to watch a long list of audition pieces until his brother, John Gilroy, decided he liked Star Wars puppeteer Dave Chapman's voice the most. They then called Chapman and told him he would voice the droid, leaving him overwhelmed.

When Gilroy spoke with actor Kyle Soller about the role of Syril Karn, Soller asked where the character would end up. Gilroy said he did not know, but Soller assumed he did know. After being wowed by actress Denise Gough's performance in the play People, Places and Things, Gilroy decided that she was the right actor for Dedra Meero. He then approached Gough for the role , and he gave Gough a rundown of the series and sent her the scripts for the first three episodes. After they spent an hour talking about the character, Gough decided she wanted the role. Gilroy pitched Meero as being "fascist" and "badass" to Gough. When Gough asked Gilroy about Meero's backstory, he explained that she was an outsider trying to be in a position of power to feel in control. Gilroy did not want to go with people known for working with Star Wars, so he and the crew brought production designer Luke Hull into the show.

Gilroy decided that the show would need a new musical vocabulary to set the right mood, so in the spring of 2020, he started secretly talking with composer Nicholas Britell before shooting had begun. Gilroy then recruited Britell to compose the score for Andor. Gilroy and Kathleen Kennedy gave composer Britell "total freedom" to imagine a unique soundscape for the series. Long before the show would enter the scoring stage to record, in August, 2020, Britell and Gilroy started their ten-month journey of preparing the music that would be heard on set. They also spent time "brainstorming, experimenting" and establishing priorities in terms of key sequences. The extra time allowed them to develop an understanding of the focus and commitment needed to score Season One's twelve episodes. The amount of work ended up being much more than they both expected. Britell and Gilroy first started working on the on-camera music and a few specific moments that Gilroy wanted to figure out early.

The funeral procession for Maarva Andor was the first element that Gilroy worked on, particularly the music. He insisted that real instruments would be played by on-screen actors instead of professional musicians, and it would be recorded on the Ferrix set. Two years before shooting started, he and Britell worked together to create a seven-minute piece. Gilroy said the funeral came alive to him through the civic procession. He also said the funeral advanced Ferrix's personality and showed that the people cared for each other. After that, they did not see each other for six months. Gilroy and Britell figured out the sound for the Time Grappler and the beskar anvil he hits with hammers. A percussion piece was used for the alarm signaling in the third episode, and they figured out how it would sound and feel on set. When Gilroy first heard Britell's theme for the series, he called Kennedy and told her they had a theme. For Ferrix, Gilroy and Britell made some of the metal sounds together using the pipes in Gilroy's basement. Gilroy visited Britell's studio three or four times a week where he would spend four to six hours working with Britell.

Gilroy said he did not direct because he had too many things to do. During production, Gilroy decided to make Andor a "build show" instead of using the Volume because he knew they could not afford to use both. He wanted the show to be as real as possible, and he wanted a look that would add more "grit and earthiness" to capture the galaxy's dangerous setting. To accomplish this, many large, intricate sets were built at Pinewood Studios, Coryton, Little Marlow, Portland House, and other locations in England. Gilroy noticed that people in every department would change their behavior and attitude due to knowing they are in Star Wars, so he encouraged them to put aside their reverence for the franchise as best they could. He said that the big action sequences and set pieces were very difficult to work with. Gilroy said the directors made certain scenes much more ambitious than what he would have done.

In September, 2020, Toby Haynes took over for Gilroy as director for the first block of the series. Gilroy initially worried about how much Haynes loved Star Wars, but Haynes made sure to put being a fan behind being a dramatist. He wanted Haynes to take ownership and bring his own style to his episodes. Gilroy said all he needed was for Haynes to know what he was going to do. He was willing to discard elements he envisaged for block one in favor of a better or different idea. When Rael's dual identities were being developed, Skarsgård explained that natural Rael and Coruscant Rael have different hand mannerisms. Gilroy thought that Skarsgård was delightful to work with. Per Gilroy's instructions, the hammer props used by the Time Grappler needed to actually work and make the correct sound. Gilroy was unaware of the easter eggs and details that the art department snuck in the show, such as the antiquities in Luthen Rael's gallery.

Gilroy said that episode six, "The Eye," was difficult because it involved more editorial than most episodes and he had many arguments with co-editor John Gilroy. Gilroy described the Narkina 5 prison as a "great set to play in." He said episode twelve, "Rix Road," was a very tough job in a fun way because of the numerous amount of things to deal with. Adria Arjona asked Gilroy if she could make Bix Caleen like a child unable to take care of herself towards the end of the series. In July, 2022, Gilroy realized that the shows The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon were both going to release in August, the original premiere date for Andor, so Gilroy suggested that the date should be moved. Gilroy and Nicholas Britell finished recording in the end of July, 2022. They finished mixing episode 12 on August 3.

Gilroy liked all of the critical praise that Andor received. Gilroy realized that maintaining the show's scope for four more seasons would be overwhelming, so he and Sanne Wohlenberg decided to use the same structure used in Season One. For Season Two, Gilroy and the crew decided to use each block to represent a year, which Gilroy found to be very exciting from a narrative point of view. He was excited about how the arcs will be very condensed and concentrated. He had a long-game plan of how the season would get to the fifth year in terms of Cassian Andor's story. Gilroy, Dan Gilroy, Beau Willimon, and , a new writer they brought in, spent about seven days in the writer's room for Season Two. Gilroy found Bissell's knowledge of canon very helpful in the writer's room. Gilroy tried to get Toby Haynes and Benjamin Caron to come back as directors, but they were too busy with other projects. Haynes was not able to give a decision in time, so Gilroy had him removed. Gilroy had a hard time bringing in directors for the season.

When Gilroy figured out Season Two, he made around thirty phone calls to actors that he know were going to go forward. He told them the details of their characters, including when they die and how many episodes they are in. He will not direct in Season Two due to not having enough spare time. He tried to get his scripts tight and the directors in play by February, 2023. He said Andor was a large amount of work that never ends. He said he does not know if he will work on other Star Wars projects after finishing Season Two. Gilroy was interviewed for Andor: A Disney+ Day Special Look, a documentary about the making of Andor. In September, 2022, he attended the Andor launch event in Hollywood, California.

When the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike began, it was reported that Gilroy would continue non-writing duties on Andor, which attracted criticism. In response, Gilroy clarified to The Hollywood Reporter he had ceased all of his production services on the series. According to his statement, he stopped all writing on the series before May 1 and did not return to the show's set after the strike began. By the time of the strike, Gilroy's scripts were already complete.