The ATX Festival last week saw the Andor panel bring Beau Willimon and Tony Gilroy to the stage to discuss a number of topics (the presense of sex in the GFFA, the use of the word ‘genocide’, the cost of the two seasons, ‘hope’ and the death of streaming) and Gilroy kicked off with the first hot topic.
“I worked on ‘Rogue [One]’ so I knew what the levels of violence were, and actually the rules loosened up considerably. Yeah, we can’t have skin, but I very consciously started the first scene in a brothel just to see what would happen and how far we could go. There’s sex. … It’s something that probably seemed at some point like it was going to be a big anxiety, and it really turned out to be a nothing-burger all the way through.”
Gilroy continued, next looking at the usage of the word ‘genocide‘ in Star Wars.
“It’s really sad how many people can find a place to put this in some place that’s meaningful for them, and, you know, I’ve been allowed to start using the word ‘fascism’ the last couple weeks. That’s liberating. But I don’t think it should be any surprise or even be too slippery or complicated for people to understand the road I have to walk to do all this; to maximize the audience and protect the investment of a really brave [company.]”
“I mean, [for] Disney this is $650 million for 24 episodes, I never took a note. We said ‘F*** the Empire’ in the first season, and they said, ‘Can you please not do that?’ … In Season 2, they said, ‘Streaming is dead, we don’t have the money we had before,’ so we fought hard about money, but they never cleaned anything up. That [freedom] comes with responsibilities.”
“But it is sad how many people can find a place to put ‘genocide’ into their vocabulary”
Beau Willimon continued.
“Rebellions are built on hope, right? And hope is a hard-won thing. You don’t wake up in the morning with a bucket full of hope. You have to earn it.”
