Andor season 2 is out in the world, giving fans around the galaxy plenty to chew over and discuss for days, weeks, months and years to come, and the man behind the show Tony Gilroy has done a shift and a half promoting a project that’s clearly very dear to him. First off, he spoke with Collider about the show and how different season 2 has been received compared to the first 2022 season.
COLLIDER: If Andor hadn’t been greenlit for two seasons, do you think you would have had a second season after the first season?
TONY GILROY: If we couldn’t get the funding to fully make the show properly, we were willing to finish after the one season and just have it be the making of a revolutionary. That was our only option if we didn’t. But we couldn’t find a way to envision a skinny version of the series.
I feel like more people are talking about Andor Season 2 right now than they were when Andor Season 1 was out. Has anyone told you how it’s doing in relation to the first season?
GILROY: No, I only know atmospherically. It’s a completely different experience. Completely different experience. We were anomalous and weird, and what were we? And what was it? The times were different. We also did something this time that was really smart. We released all 12 episodes to a lot of people.
More than that, I think that the release strategy of Season 2, of releasing each block together, was brilliant because everyone is watching their movie every Tuesday night. If you could go back in time, would you change the release of Season 1, so each block was released together?
GILROY: I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t because it took a slow burn for us to get the attention that we needed. We were so obscure. And also, to tell you the truth, we just didn’t have the guts. We had no idea when we released Season 1. We made the whole thing under a blanket. Nobody paid any attention to us. Disney sort of knew what we did, but there were no focus groups, there were no screenings. There was no nothing. It was like, “Holy shit, what do we have?” So, we wouldn’t have had the balls to do that the first time. I’m not sure. The way this worked, as an evolution, I think it was kind of perfect.
Whose idea was it to put the Battle of Yavin stuff at the beginning of each block, letting people know when this is?
GILROY: Communal decision. I think it was always communal. Johnny [Gilroy] and I argued whether the Time Grapplers should hit the bell once or twice. Shit like that. [Laughs] But I don’t really remember. Communal decision.
Gilroy also appeared on the Happy, Sad Confused podcast and dived in to a multitude of topics.
