Andor creator Tony Gilroy has said he worried he was making a serious mistake in taking on the show, revealing that he thought he had “fucked his life”.
The second season of the Star Wars prequel series is currently going out on Disney+, overseen by Gilroy, who wrote Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. He is also known for directing films such as Michael Clayton and writing several entries in the Jason Bourne franchise.
He made an appearance on the Scriptnotes podcast earlier this month, where he shared his initial doubts about taking on the hugely anticipated project, given the scale of expectations among the Star Wars audience.
“I spent the first year even when I was in London pre-COVID, I began to have just the worst buyer’s remorse,” he said. “Epic every morning, ‘What have I done? I’ve fucked my life. I shouldn’t have done this.’”
He joked that when the pandemic hit, part of him was relieved that the show might be cancelled. “When COVID came, I thought like, ‘You know what? Thank God. That will kill the show. Thank God.’ I was very, very unhappy when the phone calls started coming. Then I was like, ‘Well, I’m not coming back to London to die for this show.’”
He went on to explain that it was only when they started shooting scenes for season one that his mindset shifted. “Number one, you have your pride of work. That never goes away. I think anybody who gets onto this podcast is probably in that category of obsessive human being.
“You’re just going to do the best you can all the time, but it was with horrible, horrible doubt. It really wasn’t until we started shooting and stuff started coming in and it started to pull together. My brother Johnny really came in and was really seeing stuff. I was like, ‘Well, this is going to be good.; My feelings changed as we did the first season.”
Gilroy did add that he will not be returning to the show for a third season, however. “I’m only doing two, though, Craig,” he said. “It’s five and a half years for me….We’re done. It’s a closed circle.”
The series serves as a prequel to Rogue One, which in turn was a prequel to the original 1977 film, and it follows Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) path from common thief to a key revolutionary in the Rebel Alliance.
NME awarded the second season a full five stars, writing: “Does it cover a bit too much ground? Maybe. Does it dip a bit in the middle? Perhaps. Is Forest Whitaker having a bit too much fun chewing the scenery as brash rebel leader Saw Gerrera? Definitely. But Andor season 2 wears a level of polish that nothing else in the galaxy comes close to matching. Confident, mature and exciting from the off, the last four or five episodes hit the same highs as Rogue One – enriching the bigger story arc instead of ever just feeling like an add-on.”