Returning to the role with a hello and nabbing an Emmy nomination for his troubles, Alan Tudyk has been able to fill in many of the blanks of the short but important life of K-2SO as a rebel. Yes, he may remember seeing Emperor Palpatine on Coruscant, but thanks to Andor season 2 we know what he was like as an Imperial programmed KX-security droid, have seen his ‘birth’ as the K-2 we know and love right through the back end of the season to the doorstep of Rogue One. Here, Tudyk prepares to once again say goodbye to the character and discusses the potential pitfall of making K-2 (with his English accent) sound too much like C-3PO.
GD: You mentioned C-3PO earlier — how did you want to ensure that K-2 would be distinct from Anthony Daniels when you originated the part in Rogue One?
AT: When I started out, I wrestled with how much I could express emotionally as the character since he’s a robot. So I did look to Anthony Daniels and realized that he gives you so much permission [for emotion] in his performance as C-3PO. It was very clear to me that K-2 saw Cassian as the one authority he would listen to — it was sort of a big brother-little brother kind of relationship.
I remember there was one scene that didn’t make it into Rogue One where some Rebel soldier says, “Droid, take these crates and put them over there,” and K-2 goes, “No,” and walks away. We played around a lot like that on the Rogue One set in terms of K-2’s level of emotion, because when you’re a CG character you can pretty much say whatever you want! The filmmakers can change it at anytime.
It’s funny, I was watching Rogue One again recently and I realized that I mostly remembered the lines that I had said on set, not the ones they used in the movie. There’s a scene with Jyn Erso (played by Felicity Jones) where I remembered saying something like: “No one likes you. Everyone talks about you when you’re not in the room and they stop when you come in. Then when you leave, they start talking about you again.” But he doesn’t say that in the movie; I just remembered all the sassier lines that we came up with on set. [Laughs]
GD: I do appreciate that K-2 still talks with a British accent, continuing that tradition of Imperial officers all hailing from the U.K.
AT: Yeah, that was something that I always liked as a kid watching Star Wars. It imprinted on me, and I was glad that Gareth wanted that as well. I actually gave him three versions of the voice: the first was an American accent, which sounded awful. And then I did a Mid-Atlantic, very theater way of speaking, which didn’t sound good either. When I did the English version, he was immediately like, “Yeah, do that one.” [Laughs]
