With the finale of Star Wars: Andor setting the fandom alight – and with all shows shot out of order – it’s fascinating to think that the Ferrix scenes of the 12th episode were actually shot very early on in the filming process. Much like the last moments of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where they filmed the ‘restored’ village first, as the Sankara Stones are returned (and I mention this scene because the Sankara Stones are currently in the care of Luthen Rael on Coruscant), Maarva’s memorial on Ferrix was filmed early, and Tony Gilroy discusses the difficulties of moving the actors around the landscape of the story.
THR: When I spoke to Denise Gough and Kyle Soller about their first days on Andor, they both described the setting in the finale. So did you shoot the finale first, or was it just the first day for certain actors?
TG: Well, we shot out everything in Ferrix first, so it’s possible [that the finale was their first day]. [Tracking] has always been the writer’s job, and it’s always been my job on every movie that I’ve been on. It’s a smaller job, but it’s still very complicated. You really have to be the person who can track it all the way through. You have to be the person who knows where you are in the story at all times. It’s a huge advantage for writer-directors. Even if they don’t know how to do the camera or anything else, they have a huge leg up because they’re the one person who really knows where you are all the time. And on a show like this, it’s really complicated. And then have directors come in for blocks, and justifiably so, they only care about their s*** that’s in front of them. Sometimes, they don’t pay attention to what’s before or after. Sometimes, we have to do stuff like that. So one of my jobs is that I have to make sure of those things, but these actors are all very good at knowing how to track. They’re very good about trusting me and having conversations about where they are. So that was probably the first day for them, which is a tough scene to shoot first, right?
THR: I’ll say.
TG: When you shoot a [late-season] scene early, you don’t want the actor to come to you three months later and say, “Well, I really wish I’d known that. I would’ve done that differently.” So you don’t want to hear that. I’ve heard that, and it hurts.
