Denise Gough chats to The Hollywood Reporter about her character Dedra Meero, and the devastating effects of the eighth episode ‘Who Are You?‘, a game-changing episode not only for Andor but also for the entire saga that shows up close the sneering brutality of the Empire, a very personal, down-the-barrel intensity more frightening than any superlaser could ever hope to be.
According to Gough, Dedra didn’t predict this specific turn of events, and she genuinely just wanted to finish what she started in regard to the Axis network. If anything, she thought she could control the Ghorman scheme so tightly that she could have her cake and eat it too. She knew Syril would be the perfect patsy to embolden the Ghorman Front and unknowingly lead the Ghor to slaughter. But she mistakenly thought she could minimize the consequences of her law-abiding partner’s discovery that he’s been aiding large-scale grand theft and a planned genocide involving thousands of innocent lives.
“Her biggest fear is to lose control. So when Syril finds out what she’s done and you see her desperately say, ‘No, we’re going to go back [to Coruscant] …’ she’s losing control of this situation,” Gough tells The Hollywood Reporter. “That is what makes her feel bad about that whole Ghorman situation. It’s not really the massacre, unfortunately. It’s not that she sees that she’s wiped out all these people; it’s that she’s lost Syril.”
