BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Mon Mothma was first introduced to “Star Wars” fans as the rebel leader who appears only long enough to move the plot forward by delivering battle plans in hushed tones.
But in the last moments of the most recent “Andor" episodes on Disney+ (spoilers for already released episodes ahead) she is a patrician senator who, soaked in high-end space booze and potent emotions, tears up the dance floor to a bass-and-drums rave-up at her daughter's wedding. The scene would play as comic if it weren't tragic. None of her fellow revelers know that she has just taken a major step in her rise — or descent — into radicalism by washing her hands of an old friend who may be a threat to the burgeoning Rebel Alliance.
The size of the scene — and its subtleties — shows off the new levels of depth and breadth given to actors Genevieve O'Reilly, Adria Arjona and other central women in the second season of “Andor”; three new episodes drop on Tuesday.
“It’s a techno-galactic dance moment, but it’s also this moment of internal chaos for this woman,” O’Reilly said in an interview with The Associated Press. “She’s tacitly agreed to have her friend murdered. She’s dancing to stop herself from screaming. It’s deeply painful. It is that one moment where we can actually see Mon Mothma wrestle out of this straitjacket and dance with terrified abandon.”
Making Mon Mothma into a real character
Mothma’s conflict is in some ways even more central to the show’s premise — what does it take to make a revolution? — than that of the title character, played by Diego Luna. Like many real-life figures past and present, she is trying to maintain a facade of respectful, and respectable, opposition to tyranny while feeling the pull of open rebellion.
“If she drops that mask of diplomacy, she’s useless," O'Reilly said. “She’s only effective if she maintains composure.”
“Andor” creator Tony Gilroy told the AP that Mothma's “journey is the hardest, I think. Because she has to do everything, and has to be observed. She can’t move.”
The character originated as a brief-but-memorable role for Caroline Blakiston in 1983’s “Return of the Jedi.” The 48-year-old Ireland-born O’Reilly, who has lived much of her adult life in Australia, was first cast in the role of the young senator when the 2005 prequel “Revenge of the Sith” was shooting there, because, she says with a laugh, she was the “palest person in Sydney.”
All of her “Sith” scenes were relegated to DVD extras. But she would reprise the role in 2016’s “Rogue One," to which “Andor” is a prequel, and has played the part in the Lucasfilm properties “Star Wars: Rebels" and “Ahsoka.”
But it's in “Andor," especially Season 2, where the origin story of the leader from the planet Chandrila is truly told.
“You really feel that she’s of value to this world that is created,” O’Reilly said. “That’s the gift that every actor wants.”
Gilroy wrote the first three episodes of Season 2, and says he insisted on including the elaborate and difficult-to-produce three-day wedding ceremony that ends with the scene set to a chaotic dance-club remix of composer Nicholas Brittel’s “Niamos!” from Season 1.
Gilroy says the expanded roles for his show's women came in part from him learning the talents of the performers.
“You get a big show like this where time is really your friend in a way," he said, "and you watch who rises.”
Gilroy knew O’Reilly from “Rogue One,” which he also wrote, but said she’s basically “a piece of furniture” in that movie.
He brought her to “Andor” as a legacy character without giving it much thought. But then he got to see her work.
“It was like, ’My God, look what she can do, she can do anything,” Gilroy said. “She’s a freaking Steinway. Let's go for it.”
Kleya: Stepping out of the shadows in ‘Andor’ Season 2
He had a similar experience of discovery with Elizabeth Dulau, whose character Kleya had an intriguing but small part in Season 1 as the lieutenant of violent revolutionary Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård).
Gilroy remembers thinking, “She could be the sorcerer’s apprentice, or she could be one of the greatest actresses I’ve ever worked with in my life."
He chose to treat her as the latter, and this season Kleya gets a real arc and a detailed backstory.
Bix Caleen: Bringing new dimensions to Star Wars
Arjona, who plays Bix Caleen, the partner in romance and rebellion to Luna's Cassian Andor, was “another person it’s easy to underestimate.”
She gets to travel the greatest dramatic distances of any character in Season 2, after limited time in Season 1.
She begins as a communal rural farmer in hiding with fellow rebels then becomes an urban dweller with Andor. She moves from trauma into traumatic stress, and from struggle with addiction into explosive action.
“This season I just felt so cushioned,” she told the AP. “I’ve never done a Season 2 of anything. I was able to go to places that I’ve never sort of dabbled in in my career, because I felt so safe at every twist and turn.”
In the most recently released episode, she is the target of an attempted sexual assault from an imperial officer, which Arjona said shows “the abuse of power, but in a galaxy far far away.”
And she called her forthcoming final lines on the series “the scariest moment that I’ve ever been presented with. I didn’t know how to tackle it as an actress.”
“I was a mess!” she added. "It took me takes and takes of me absolutely just bawling through that scene until finally it gets to what I believe they used."
The work of his fellow actors leaves the star almost embarrassed by the project's title.
“It’s a paradox that this show is called ‘Andor’ because it’s about community, it’s an ensemble,” Luna said. “The complexity of that is what makes this show interesting.”
Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press
