Cautious not to be misconstrued as promoting any of his projects, Tony Gilroy spoke to a handful of outlets including Deadline, IndieWire and Entertainment Weekly about the impressive haul of 8 nominations Star Wars: Andor recieved at the Emmys, including nods for writing, cinematography, and Outstanding Drama Series. Speaking with IndieWire he touched upon the lack of transparancy regarding streaming viewership for Andor, a show that is a huge success in every measurable way apart from how many people are watching it and another issue of relevance to the SAG-AFTRA actors strike which is less than a day old but set to run and run unless both sides come to the table with horses to trade.
IW: Critics have raved about it, but it doesn’t necessarily have the highest viewership for Star Wars. What would you tell people who have maybe hesitated to watch it?
TG: I’m gonna go back to the strike then. One of the central issues of this entire labor experience is that I don’t have any idea what the audience is. We don’t know what that is, and I think that the obscurity of data doesn’t help anyone. Really. I think it looks like low-hanging fruit and easy profitability for certain corporations, but in the end it just crushes any kind of free market. It crushes the economics of the business, it means people are being overpaid and underpaid and never properly paid. It means that productions are overloaded with expenses up top because what used to be commonly residuals and royalties now have to be front loaded. I think it’s distorted and warped and is close to ruining this amazing industry. So I wish I knew how many people watched, I wish I knew who they were, and I’m not sure that that’s possible.
Gilroy was also asked his thoughts on the shows many nominations, nods that were extended to fellow Star Wars projects Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Mandalorian and Light & Magic.
IW: You’re nominated for writing, directing, cinematography – do you have any comment about the rest of the team’s nominations?
TG: I know that there’s spots where — we have no actors and I think our cast is amazing, everybody thinks it — but somebody just asked me if there was one award that [means] the most and I just think that the fact that we’re one of the top shows, that nomination is for everybody in our entire community. And it’s an enormous community of people at Pinewood. I hope they’re all taking pride in that today.
