Set 5 years earlier than the occasions of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Disney+’s Andor finds each Diego Luna and Genevieve O’Reilly revisiting roles they performed earlier than.
Luna headlines the live-action Star Wars sequence because the titular Cassian Andor, whom audiences first met in 2016’s Rogue One, whereas O’Reilly performed Mon Mothma in each Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One (in addition to voiced the character in just a few animated choices).
However whereas Rogue One launched Cassian as an skilled intelligence officer inside the Insurgent alliance, Andor will fill in an entire lotta blanks about how he got here to hitch that trigger within the first place. Stated backstory was fleetingly hinted at in a throwaway Rogue One line the place Cassian makes clear to somebody, “I’ve been on this combat since I used to be six years outdated!”
Antonio Viña as Kassa (Younger Cassian)
That formative childhood, parceled out in early Andor flashbacks, “was a reveal for me,” Luna shares with TVLine. “And I feel it’s going to be fairly attention-grabbing for audiences as properly, as a result of after they have been Rogue One — when Cassian says, ‘Ive been a part of this combat since I used to be six years outdated’ — I don’t assume they actually mirrored on that.
“What does it imply to start out a combat whenever you’re six years outdated? What makes you miss your childhood that method, that you’re a part of a motion already?” asks Luna. “We’re going to see what that line meant, and I used to be simply shocked after I learn what [Andor creator] Tony [Gilroy] was proposing — which occurs to me usually with the writing of Tony Gilroy. It’s so advanced and distinctive, but it surely’s so juicy additionally.”
Gilroy, who co-wrote the Rogue One screenplay, “has a solution for every thing,” Luna avows, “and Cassian’s backstory is intense. It’s highly effective, it’s emotional, and I feel audiences are going to see him in another way after understanding what occurred in his childhood.”
O’Reilly and Luna in ‘Rogue One’ (Courtesy of Everett Assortment)
Genevieve O’Reilly says that what shocked her most about her personal character’s backstory through Andor was to see the girl Mon Mothma was as a upright senator (with a secret or two…), years earlier than she’d turn into chief of the Insurgent Alliance (after which the primary chancellor of the New Republic, as performed in Return of the Jedi by Caroline Blakiston).
“I like this lady, and I’ve performed this lady a lot of instances,” O’Reilly notes for TVLine, “and I feel what shocked me was the opulence of her life, the opulence of that empire that she was residing in.
“I knew that she had been a senator from a really younger age — I did play her very briefly in Revenge of the Sith after I was very younger, and I bear in mind these costumes. I bear in mind the element and the fantastic thing about them being according to say, Queen Amidala, on the time,” provides the actress. “And it makes full sense now, whenever you consider the orthodoxy she has been residing in inside Empire.”
Andor premieres this Wednesday, Sept. 21, with its first three episodes, which run 35 to 40 minutes every; the remainder of the 12-episode season will then roll out weekly. (Season 1 spans a 12 months in time, whereas Season 2 will cowl 4 years.) O’Reilly first seems in Episode 4 — and below slightly fascinating circumstances.
“I like that they’ve invested time in that [backstory], as a result of it provides me as an actor and us as an viewers someplace to go,” says O’Reilly. “We all know that she results in a bunker in Yavin, and I can’t wait to see how we go from right here to there.”
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