The Mothma prophecies

What is it that separates Andor from other Star Wars series, and why has playing Mon Mothma for 20 years meant so much to Genevieve O’Reilly? The actor tells DQ about making the Disney+ thriller, its bold storytelling choices and portraying a character who would become a Rebel leader.

Just like the Star Wars fans who have eagerly awaited the return of Disney+ series Andor ever since season one debuted almost three years ago, star Genevieve O’Reilly is happy and relieved that the long wait is now over.

The bulk of the show was actually filmed before the US writers and actors strikes shut down production for most of 2023, “so it’s been a bit of a minute since we’ve done it,” the actor tells DQ.

After season one received rave reviews, S2 equally felt like the cast and crew – led by showrunner Tony Gilroy – were “crafting a little diamond,” O’Reilly says. “It felt really special to be a part of this. Everybody was just working as hard and as fast and as wild as they could to make it the best. It felt really special that we were all still there together and that every department was really as ambitious as they possibly could be, across the spectrum of departments that it takes to make a television show.”

Landing on the heels of fellow Disney+ Star Wars live-action shows The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor centres on Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a thief who becomes a revolutionary and eventually joins the emerging rebellion against the Galactic Empire.

Notably, Andor serves as a prequel to 2016 feature film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which follows a heroic band of rebels as they steal the plans to the Empire’s weapon of mass destruction, the Death Star – events that serve as a prelude to the story of the franchise’s original film, 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope.

In both seasons of Andor, O’Reilly plays Mon Mothma, an Imperial senator who increasingly tries to navigate the politics of the Empire while secretly helping to fund the rebels.

Despite being very much set in the Star Wars universe, Andor has won acclaim for the fact it is less a ‘Star Wars story’ and more a political spy thriller with fantastical costumes and settings.

“What Andor really seeks to achieve is to look not at the black and not at the white, but the grey. Under the umbrella of science fiction or Star Wars, it’s really curious about our humanity,” O’Reilly observes. “It steps away from genre. There are no lightsabers, there is no Force, there are no Jedi. It is really about different groups of people and the courage of ordinary people it takes to bring down an empire. So yes, it’s Star Wars but I feel it’s so rooted in our human history. You can feel the shadows of that history woven through Andor. Really, that’s Tony’s writing and he’s coming at it through a political thriller psychological lens. It is adventurous, but it’s not just adventure.”

Opening five years before Rogue One, Andor S1 took place over a year. S2 now concludes Cassian’s story over the final four years leading into Rogue One, as he becomes a key player in the Rebel Alliance.

In fact, S2 is split into four ‘chapters’ where the story progresses by one year every three episodes, as Gilroy and star Luna recognised the difficulty they would have in keeping the show’s extensive cast and crew together to tell the story over five full seasons.

“They very bravely realised that they should try something different. They should try to keep everybody, every department, and risk something genuinely ambitious,” O’Reilly says. “So the structure of this season still takes us up to Rogue One, which is that nucleus of an idea to take Cassian Andor from this dissident, upset, broken human and allow him to step into that destiny that he brings to Rogue One.

“For me, within the process of it, it felt like almost four little films, because each one is three hours. So each three is a moment, and often those moments are like three days or four days, so you’re really dropping into a very specific moment of all these characters’ lives. You tell a very detailed, intricate, quite electric story and then you jump a year and you dial in again to a very specific moment.”

O’Reilly had never previously worked in that way on a series, but was used to carrying with her elements of a character’s story that the audience might not see. “Actually, it was really liberating to get to [time] jump, and just dive into a new moment. So in episodes one, two and three, for example, Mon Mothma is in a family ancestral home. You’re learning about her history and what’s going on with her family life at that moment. Then you jump, and in episode four, you’re in a work environment. What it does is really focus the drama. It was so enlightening.”

While S2 completes Cassian Andor’s story arc, he isn’t the only character whose full path is now realised by the show. The series arrives 20 years after O’Reilly first played Mon Mothma in feature film Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, and though her scenes didn’t make the final cut, she went on to portray the political figure in Rogue One more than a decade later. She then appeared in episodes of another Star Wars series, 2023’s Ahsoka, which debuted in between seasons of Andor, and voiced the character in 2017 animated series Star Wars: Rebels.

Mon Mothma’s story concludes, on screen at least, in 1983’s Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. In the final film in the initial trilogy, Caroline Blakiston played the character as she rises to the position of Rebel leader.

Thanks to Gilroy’s dedication to the character, “I know her more than I ever knew her before,” O’Reilly says. “Previously, she was a very important figure within that world, but she was quite stoic, she was quite statuesque, she was quite an expositional figure. I didn’t really know much about her. I knew through lore, through canon and through the arc of the Star Wars stories that she was important, but I didn’t know much about her and I feel really grateful, actually, that Tony has taken narrative time and space to discover her and to reveal her, really, and then, in a backwards fashion, enlighten the work that was done previously.

“It’s just been extraordinary for me to be at this moment in my life and to really get to wrestle with this character in a way I could have only hoped for.”

O’Reilly’s other credits include TV series Tin Star, Glitch and Episodes, as well as features  The Dry, The Snowman and The Young Victoria. Yet working on Andor has been a “uniquely special” experience for her, with the cast and crew creating an “electric” atmosphere on set at Pinewood Studios, where they brought the show to its predetermined conclusion.

She particularly praises costume designer Michael Wilkinson, with whom she shared a “unique” bond, and production designer Luke Hull, who was responsible for the show’s “breathtaking and deeply artistic sets.”

“By making them, by being in Pinewood all together on stages where everything is tactile and real, it makes it a really shared experience, not just for all of the actors, but also for the camera people, for our lighting designers. Everyone’s seeing the same thing,” O’Reilly says.

“All those departments really lifted each other. You could see people walk onto those sets and get excited, even the supporting artists. I remember working with so many people who would travel to Pinewood each morning – goodness knows how many hours it took them to get there – and just really being part of something special.”

Mon Mothma’s look was set early on by Gilroy and Wilkinson, who “decided to take a swing” by shifting her clothing away from her previous style. “We know where we have to finish, so they started antithetical to that. I thought that was brave because it meant a different look for what had been an iconic character, but it allowed for such creativity,” O’Reilly says.

Hair and make-up designer Emma Scott similarly freshened up the character’s appearance. “There’s a lot of Mon Mothma who lives in that wig,” O’Reilly jokes. “I wouldn’t really have to do much preparation in the morning. We would get ready and we would do all the little intricate preparations that you do on a set that all actors do, and then she would put on the wig and it was like, ‘Oh, there she is, there’s Mon Mothma, here we are, ready to start the day.’”

Normally limited to political asides as Mon Mothma walks the fine line between public diplomacy and private rebellion, O’Reilly got the chance to let the character break free during a wedding dance sequence early in season two.

“There’s a scene at the end of episode three where I got to move as this woman in a way I’d never experienced before, and it was wonderful for me as an actor to be able to wrestle her out of her physical structure to represent this chaos she’s holding,” the Irish actor explains. “That was such a special moment for me playing this woman, but then also we jump to different moments in her life.

“You see the senator, you see the woman – who is such a brilliant politician – and then because it’s season two, you also see this woman who must step out from the shadows. We know she ends up in a rebel base. So there was so much landscape for me to be able to carve the character within this season. I go back to thanking Tony for that, for trusting me with it and writing it for me.”

As Andor’s final episodes roll out on Disney+ over the coming weeks after its launch today, O’Reilly hopes the series continues to cross cultural and generational boundaries, regardless of whether they could recognise Darth Vader from Darth Maul.

“It is an intergenerational piece and there is so much here for everyone,” she says. “What I really hope is that, because of its central narrative as a piece about humans, about us, about us right now, maybe people who aren’t Star Wars fans might turn it on. That’s the dream.”

tagged in: Andor, Disney, Genevieve O’Reilly, Star Wars, Tin Star