Lots of good stuff from EW.com
Genevieve o'Reilly on Mon Mothma Karaoke Dance Party"It was everything," O'Reilly says of finally getting to drop Mon's mask for a moment. "It's such a special moment. It's a crescendo of so much to get to relieve Mon from the structure of the column that she is."
However, O'Reilly cautions against viewers taking it as a moment of abandon rather than one of distress. "Yes, it's this extraordinary, wild, free dance movement," she adds. "But it's also because she's writhing in pain because of what she's just done. She's just tacitly agreed to have her friend murdered, so she's dancing to stop herself from screaming."
"It's so clever how, by the dance, you really get to see the chaos that's inside her head," she concludes.
If you're curious what song the crowd was dancing to, it was the same as what we hear on screen, "Niamos!" written by composer Nicholas Britell. Audiences heard it a few times in the first season. "This is the big, galactic hit version," O'Reilly says. "It's like at any wedding, all those kids are waiting for the DJ to come in to get up on the dance floor. Gosh, we had so much fun that day."
O'Reilly might have had a blast, but Mon Mothma most decidedly is not. This incident with Tay Kolma and his inevitable fate have fully shattered any last illusions she might have held about the cost of rebellion.
"Luthen's really called her out on any romantic notion of rebellion," she notes. "We're all dispensable. It all comes with a cost, and Tay is a really dangerous threat to them at that moment. He knows so much about her."
He was instrumental in everything that happened in season 1," she says of Tay. "All of those economic decisions to allow for the funding of this rebellion he was such an intricate part of that. Now, it seems he's kneeling at the altar of false idols with Sculdun (Richard Dillane). He sees all that gold and he wants a taste of it, and there's not really a place for that gold within rebellion."
Adria Arjona (Bix) on her near rape"We had an amazing stunt team and partner in Ari as a director, who shot that scene scientifically and in such a precise way so as to save us from doing a million takes," Arjona notes.
"It was challenging because everyone involved in the creation of that scene felt the importance of what this scene meant, not only for the show, but for
Star Wars," she adds. "But I also felt incredibly safe and cushioned in the process of doing it. It's something
Tony Gilroy does. He brings this mirror effect that [shows] the things that happen in our world can also happen in a galaxy far, far away."
Before Krole attacks Bix, he circles her like a predator in earlier scenes in which she invokes the tried and true female line of defense, mentioning her husband. Arjona wants to assure fans, however, that though they essentially act like a married couple, we didn't miss a Bix and Cassian (
Diego Luna) wedding in the off-season.
"It's a way of escaping," she explains. "It's very different for her to say, 'My boyfriend is coming.' She might feel that he won't respect her, right? But if she says, my husband, there's power to that. There's respect to that. She hopes in her wildest dreams that he respects that. Of course he doesn't, but she feels incredibly cornered at that moment."
"It's more complex than a cute wedding in the gap year." she continues. "She's trying to get out of a very tricky situation that, as women, we unfortunately are stuck in quite a bit."
For Arjona, she found solace and inspiration in real-life accounts of women who have survived rape and torture. "I felt like I went through the acting Olympics," she says of season 2. "The research was heavier. I've read so many interviews and I saw so many videos of people that have actually gone through this."
"That process was the most draining," she reflects. "And it stayed with me. By the time that I was doing the scenes, it felt like I was telling a little part of the story of the five individuals who I really honed in on their stories. [People] that no one really knows about. It felt like I was making them proud. They have no idea who I am, but it was a little homage that I was carrying through."
Kyle Soller (Syril aka Henry Thomas) and Denise Gough (Dedra) on their relationship and moreFor his part, Soller thought their pairing off was a brilliant idea. "At the end of season 1, nobody really knew what was going to happen to them," he notes. "But what better than to try to make these two weirdos come together and live together. Then to top it all off, we have a 'meet the parents' scene, which is the Thanksgiving dinner from hell, and Eedy blows up the sanctity of their apartment."
Her coming in and completely disrupting the place," says Soller, "and taking these weird, shrimpy fondue things and splattering the orange goo everywhere, it was a trip, man. We had to stop filming sometimes. We were all just laughing and exploring how playful we could be."
Soller was just looking forward to Gough getting to experience working with Hunter, particularly her interpretation of this character. "I was so excited for Denise to experience Kathryn as Eedy," he says. "I'd had the joy of experiencing that for the first season. And those were many of my highlights in the first season because she's so free, inventive, playful, and does unexpected things and keeps it alive as you're working these long days."
Gough was equally as pumped to get the chance to act opposite Hunter. "She's a theater legend in my world," Gough gushes. "I didn't think she could possibly live up to my expectations, but she surpassed them."
"The thing about working with someone like Kathryn is, actors like her don't make the obvious choice when they're hitting the ball back," Gough continues, echoing Soller. "What looks like an intimidation on the page became a negotiation between these two women because of how she received what I was saying."
Gough on Dedra's revealed upbringingFor Gough, this provided more insight into Dedra and why she's such an unfeeling agent for the Empire. "I knew before signing onto this series that Dedra had a very, very tough upbringing and that she was indoctrinated from a very young age," Gough explains. "When the [series] was cut from five seasons to two, it was extraordinary that [creator Tony Gilroy] managed to tell Dedra's entire story in those three lines of dialogue. You get everything you need from that."
It stands in stark contrast to what we know of another orphan on
Andor, Cassian himself, who was raised in a loving home with Maarva (Fiona Shaw) and Clem. "Maarva teaches Cassian through her actions what love is," says Gough. "And then she tells him what love is when he says, 'I won't be able to stop thinking about you,' and she says, 'Well, that's just love.' Nobody has ever said that to Dedra. She's never had anyone affirm her."
From the beginning, Dedra has always existed in a gray space, walking the line between Imperial underling desperate to prove her worth and a true instigator of evil. Knowing how stark her childhood must have been opened up Dedra even more to Gough.
"She has had a life of love being withheld," Gough reflects. "There would've been a lot of physical and emotional abuse in the Kinderblock. She's not someone who knows what to do when intimacy comes her way. She feels most safe when she's in control. That feels like a version of love. If I control everything, I feel calm, and when I'm out of control, the anxiety builds."
Henry Thomas, you lucky *******
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/Star-Wars-Celebration-2023-Portraits-04-041023-1975c4ad0a9c49abb9ef3fd3181688a8.jpg)
[url=https://ew.com/andor-creator-tony-gilroy-teases-hellacious-season-2-mon-montha-11692743][/url]
