Trivia / Andor

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• Author's Saving Throw
  • In contrast to previous live-action Star Wars shows - The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, along with the animated Star Wars: The Bad Batch - Tony Gilroy confirmed that Andor would be much less reliant on Easter Eggs as a driving force of the plot, as all four aforementioned series faced some criticisms for their cameo-heavy plots. While there are certainly nods to past and future events as well as several blink-and-you-miss-it references, none of them are done in such a way that they necessitate viewing of another show or movie.
  • The Volume digital backdrops are a revolutionary filmmaking technology, allowing for near photoreal environments using a digital screen as an evolution of Chroma Key and used extensively for previous Star Wars shows. But the technology still has its limitations ^note smoke and dust effects are less convincing, there is still only so much physical space on set for crowd scenes (characters sometimes appear to be wandering oddly carefully around a 30 foot circle even in environments that should be very open, like their actors are trying to avoid hitting a screen), and every shot has to be calculated and programmed ahead of time and that created an unfortunate uniformity of the look and design of those shows. Tony Gilroy sought to bring in new people into the whole process instead of the standard crew, opting not to use Volume because the background plates are handled in pre-production and you're just adding the actors to it. So Andor chose to film chiefly on physical sets and real locations with sometimes hundreds of extras, minimally using Volume-like technology in support of real sets like the backdrop outside windows, making for a very sharp-looking show that rivals the films.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Andy Serkis auditioned for a part in the show because he was a fan of Rogue One.
  • Stellan Skarsgård was quick to accept the part of Luthen Rael because it was a second chance for him to work with Diego Luna after a previous project they were attached to fell through.
• Blooper: In "Nobody's Listening!", there's a Pelican-brand equipment case tucked inside the cart of machine parts that Cassian pushes through a door, secured to the cart with zip ties. Fortunately, it's dark and shadowed in the spot where the case is, and the case is also dark-colored, so it's not very noticeable unless you know what you're looking for.
• Content Leak: Despite some initial confusion due to it shooting concurrently with Obi-Wan Kenobi, this show had numerous small leaks owing to its usage of real-world locations when filming, as opposed to shows like The Mandalorian saga and spinoffs or Obi-Wan that filmed primarily indoors on the Volume soundstage. With that said, basically none of these small leaks received any mainstream media attention outside of "nerd" news sites and Star Wars leaks communities.
  • There were unconfirmed rumors that Andy Serkis had been seen on set, leading to speculations that Snoke would appear in the show that were largely dismissed due to the show's time period, and even led to some assuming that Serkis's involvement at all might've been a fabrication. Viewers, even ones who follow leaks, were caught off-guard when "Narkina 5" revealed he wasn't playing a Serkis Folk character at all.
  • Stellan Skarsgård casually revealed in a Swedish-language interview that he and Forest Whitaker share a great scene together, accidentally spoiling Saw Gerrera's appearance in this series prior to the official announcement of Whitaker's involvement.
  • The largest leaks of all were for the Niamos scenes, which were shot at a snack bar at Cleveleys Beach in Blackpool, UK in late April 2021, located close to several busy streets. Passerby took numerous candid videos and telephoto stills of Cassian's confrontation with the Shoretrooper, Cassian and Melshi's conversation in "Daughter of Ferrix", and actors wearing the same mocap rig as Alan Tudyk's K-2SO, confirming the presence of KX droids, and posted them on Twitter throughout the duration of the shoot. In one candid still, Diego Luna even makes eye contact with the photographer and waves at them.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Diego Luna said that "One Way Out" and "Rix Road" are his favorite episodes of the first season. In particular, he was so affected hearing Maarva's speech while shooting the latter episode that he burst into tears.
• Development Gag: In episode 4, Cassian discusses the time he spent on Mimban prior to the start of the series. Mimban was planned to appear in Cassian's debut film, Rogue One, before it was cut and replaced with Jedha before ultimately being used in Solo.
• Enforced Method Acting: According to Diego Luna and Andy Serkis, the cast felt genuinely dehumanized by the sterile conditions and uncomfortably homogeneous outfits of the Narkina-5 episodes, the last Season 1 storyline filmed.
• Fake Brit: The Irish Denise Gough portrays Dedra Meero with a Received Pronunciation accent, similar to most other high-ranking Imperials.
• Ironic Name: The vicious and tyrannical Empire is hunting for a Rebel agent called "Axis". Three of the most vicious and tyrannical empires in twentieth-century history were collectively called the Axis.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The sizzle reel for the series, released in December 2020 likely fairly soon after filming began, shows several pieces of concept art at the end, and although all of them are seen in Season 1 at least in their most basic spirit, two evidently had the context surrounding them radically altered. One shows Cassian piloting a small starfighter with a broken windshield, implying that he was using the fighter for an on-planet escape or attack, that may have been reworked into the escape from the planet Aldhani through the Eye, which left atmosphere (not survivable with a broken windshield) and took place on a much larger craft. Another shows a slightly bloodied Cassian wielding a blaster and taking cover from Stormtroopers, implying that he was engaged in a firefight with them, which seems to have been reworked into the scene in "Announcement" where he hides from a Stormtrooper patrol on Ferrix and explicitly does not fight them. There's also brief footage of Diego Luna (or his stuntman; everyone's wearing masks) and another performer rehearsing a scuffle and dodging a swinging obstacle as part of a potentially very early version of the warehouse shootout in "Reckoning". However, the final version is purely a shootout and nobody gets close enough to each other for a physical scuffle.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Diego Luna and Adria Arjona portray Cassian Andor and Bix Caleen, respectively, in English and Latin American Spanish.
• The Other Darrin: Admiral Yularen is played by actor Malcom Sinclair, who replaces Robert Clarke (the actor who played the then-unnamed character in A New Hope) and Tom Kane (who voiced him on Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels prior to the actor's retirement).
• Permanent Placeholder: According to this post-season 1 article on StarWars.com, B2EMO is voiced by longtime Star Wars puppeteer Dave Chapman. The original plan was to just use his voice on-set as a placeholder for the actors to respond to and then dub over him later with someone else, but the showrunners weren't really feeling any of the audition tapes they got and wound up preferring Chapman's performance. When they told him they were sticking with his performance in the final show, Chapman, used to having his performance replaced, was "overcome".
• Playing Against Type:
  • Andy Serkis, the Trope Namer for Serkis Folk who's played roles like Gollum, Caesar, and Snoke, plays a non mo-cap role here as Kino. It also stands in contrast to Snoke, his last major role in the franchise, as the mysterious villain who later turns out to be a Puppet King is the exact opposite of the outwardly gruff but otherwise caring prison supervisor.
  • Best known for her role as the abusive Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter films, Fiona Shaw plays a positive parental substitute this time, Maarva Andor. Moreover, a revolutionary Cool Old Lady like Maarva could not be more different from the Obsessively Normal Aunt Petunia. Finally, Petunia wanted nothing more than to not have to look after Harry; Marva insists on taking Kassa out of danger and raising him as her own.
  • Alex Lawther is usually associated with playing weird, creepy characters who are unnerving at best and outright horrible at worst; a sharp contrast to the genuinely polite and idealistic Karis Nemik.
• Produced by Cast Member: Diego Luna also serves as a producer in addition to playing the title character.
• Production Posse
  • One of the second season's directors, Alonso Ruizpalacios, previously directed Diego Luna on two episodes of Narcos: Mexico. Damián García, a cinematographer on Ruizpalacios' movies and director of photography for Narcos: Mexico, held a DOP position on installments from both Andor seasons.
  • A large number of people on screen and behind the scenes on Andor also worked on Chernobyl, including actors such as Stellan Skarsgård, Alex Ferns, Robert Emms, Adrian Rawlins, as well as production staff such as Casting Director Nina Gold and Production Designer Luke Hull.
  • Several actors were part of the ensemble for the Harry Potter series a decade before the show: Fiona Shaw as Maarva Andor, after playing Petunia Dursley; Kathryn Hunter as Eedy Karn, after playing Arabella Figg; and Adrian Rawlins as the Narkina-5 doctor, after playing James Potter.
  • Harry McEntire (who plays a weapons specialist offer) and Stanley Townsend (Commandant Jayhold Beehaz) were both in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 earlier in 2022 as Noah/Consul N and Triton/Consul T respectively.
• Release Date Change: The series was originally due to premiere on August 31, 2022 before it was changed to September 21 with the release of the first official trailer on August 1 so that the release schedule overlaps less with She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and perhaps also so that it doesn't have to compete so much with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon, which both debuted in late August.
• Renewed Before Premiere: Disney+ ordered a second season months before the streaming of the first one began.
• Role Reprise
  • Diego Luna, Genevieve O'Reilly, and Duncan Pow reprise their roles of Cassian Andor, Mon Mothma, and Ruescott Melshi in the flesh six years after Rogue One. O'Reilly has played the role since 2005's Revenge of the Sith, albeit only in a deleted scene.
  • Forest Whitaker reprises his role of Saw Gerrera after portraying him earlier in Rogue One, Star Wars Rebels, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
  • Alan Tudyk has been confirmed to reprise his Rogue One role as K-2SO in the second season.
  • In the show's German-language dub, Erich Räuker reprises Yularen from Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
• Sequel in Another Medium: Or rather a prequel in this case, as a streaming series detailing the Mysterious Past of one of the protagonists of the theatrical film Rogue One.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: The Aldhani Eye festival in "The Eye" was supposed to feature thousands of extras playing Aldhani natives, but COVID restrictions put the kibosh on that and forced the number of extras to be drastically cut down, which also forced the mechanics of the heist to be altered as well. The showrunners worked around this by having some Imperial higher-ups discuss the "comfort stations" they set up along the pilgrimage route that caused the party to dwindle down to the few dozen we see in the final version. As Tony Gilroy put it, it made their story more interesting in a weird way, because it turned the Aldhani culture into one on its last legs, getting strangled by the Empire.
• Uncredited Role: Sam Witwer, who previously voiced Starkiller, the Son, and Maul, portrays the shore trooper who arrests Cassian in "Announcement".
• What Could Have Been:
  • When the earliest incarnation of the series was first announced back in 2018, it was pitched as a sort of Buddy Cop Show in the vein of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid following the adventures of Cassian and K-2SO, with Jared Bush developing the concept and Stephen Schiff as showrunner. Unfortunately, none of the plotline or story ideas were really working out, so Lucasfilm asked Tony Gilroy for input in early 2019, eventually leading to him taking the reins as showrunner and the show taking on its present form.
  • There were originally plans for the show to run for five seasons, but after realizing how long it was taking to film the first season, followed by nearly a year of post-production, the decision was made to condense the remaining storylines into a second season and end the show there. Showrunner Tony Gilroy stated that the final scene of the series is planned to show Cassian getting on the transport to the Rings of Kafrene, where his first scene in Rogue One takes place.
  • Maarva's Rousing Speech, as originally filmed, ended with the line "Fuck the Empire!", which would have been the first time that a Star Wars product used the word. However, the line was dubbed over with "Fight" instead, which changed the speech from Maarva merely decrying the Empire to now being a full call to action.
  • Alonso Ruizpalacios was originally approached to help direct Season 1. He would become later become tapped to direct some episodes of Season 2.
• Word of Saint Paul:
  • In an interview with Vanity Fair, Andy Serkis mentioned that he envisioned his character Kino as a wrongfully imprisoned union leader. The Empire supposedly saw his ability to galvanize people into action and placed him into the foreman/"Kapo" role in the prison in the hopes that he might galvanize people into being good little cogs in the prison labor system. He also debunked any and all speculation that Kino Loy is in any way related to Snoke, his character from the Sequel Trilogy.
  • According to Kyle Soller, who portrays Syril Karn, he worked with co-star Kathryn Hunter (who portrays the mother of his character) to come up with a backstory for their characters and their dysfunctional relationship, which they envisioned as involving an acrimonious breakup between Syril's parents that led to his mother taking out her dissatisfaction on him.
• Working Title: Reportedly, the series' production codename was "Pilgrim" in casting calls and such. Some of the photography and production work for this series took place at the same time as Obi-Wan Kenobi, whose codename was "White Snake", leading to fans in search of leaks getting confused on what was happening for which show. Even Jimmy Fallon got tripped up when he asked Diego Luna on The Tonight Show in early 2020 if the show's title was White Snake, but Luna apparently chose to interpret the question as asking if that would be the final title, and replied, "I hope not," followed by him snickering a bit when he mentally translated the title to Spanish and added that he thought "White Snake" in Spanish sounded like the title of a porn movie.
• You Look Familiar:
  • James McArdle, who portrays Timm Karlo, previously appeared in The Force Awakens as Niv Lek, one of the X-Wing pilots attacking Starkiller Base.
  • As mentioned above, Sam Witwer appears in an Uncredited Role as a shoretrooper in "Announcement", after portraying numerous characters across a variety of Star Wars media over the years, but most notably Darth Maul, Emperor Palpatine, and Starkiller.
  • After playing Snoke (who was a Serkis Folk character, but still) in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Andy Serkis returns in "Narkina 5" as Cassian's foreman of sorts in their prison labor block.
  • Latesha Wilson previously acted in the Sequel Trilogy as Derla Pidys, a full-body costume alien in Canto Bight, and Wilsa Teshlo, an alien pilot in the Citizens' Fleet during the Battle of Exegol. In Andor, she returns to play Gani, one of the human hostesses in the brothel on Morlana 1.

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