Alan Tudyk Opens Up on the Challenges of Filming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

It has become commonplace in the Star Wars franchise for droids to come in and steal not just scenes, but also the hearts of the audiences watching them. R2-D2 proved the power of a droid early on, and that legacy continues with the likes of The Mandalorian‘s IG-11, voiced by Taika Waititi. Many droids have had an impact on Star Wars fans over the years, including the Alan Tudyk-voiced K-2SO, from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

The cutthroat and hilarious K-2SO instantly became a favorite amongst the Star Wars faithful, but Tudyk has revealed that bringing the character to life was a little more challenging than many might have expected. During an interview with Collider, Tudyk explained that script changes in the middle of production led to some confusing moments on set.

“I definitely look back on it fondly. It was a challenge, in that the script was changing at a certain point,” Tudyk explained. “There was a certain point early on where the story shifted. A new writer was brought in and things were changed. And so, I had met Jyn Erso’s character one way, and they even used it in the trailers where I say, ‘Hello, Cassian said you are a friend. I will not kill you.’ And people, when I would go to Comic-Cons would say, ‘Could you write that?’ I’m like, ‘It’s not in the movie, that quote!’ It was just an early version of how I met Jyn Erso. So things changed.We were on set and we’d be like, ‘Ok so this scene is after we’ve met? Or before? Oh, we just met in a new scene that happened.’ So that’s tough. That’s tricky. That can shake your faith. But in working with Gareth Edwards, I love working with him. And Diego Luna is a lot of fun. There were a lot of pictures on set, like from on set, pictures that I got to see, and there’s a lot of me and Diego, and I’m laughing. I’m just laughing my ass off a lot. And we went to Maldives! … And we went to Jordan! So we were flying all these places before they had built the thing they built for Mandalorian, where you go to Long Beach and you can be anywhere! You’re surrounded by all those screens. We were actually flying to places and doing the whole filmmaking thing, and waking up at whatever time in the morning to hook up with some Bedouins so they could take us to this one place that we could overlook to see Jedi. Seeing Stormtroopers on actual camels, and they’re like, ‘Eh, we’re gonna fix the camels later!’ That stuff was magic, man. Magic.”

Of course, everything worked out in the end, and the version of K-2SO that we got in Rogue One turned out to be an incredibly memorable one. According to Tudyk, a lot of the credit for that goes to the film’s director, Gareth Evans.

“Tony Gilroy coming in at the end and doing all the rewrites… it was still the same thing, it just connected things a little bit tighter,” Tudyk continued. “But Gareth, man. K2SO would not be K2SO, the K2 that ended up in the movie, without Gareth, and without the decisions that Gareth made. All of the stuff, like lines that I said, where I was goofing around half the time because Gareth made it so much fun on set. That was so easygoing and so proactive, such a proactive director. Things that like, we get caught, I’m pretending that Cassian was a prisoner and saying [after] I hit him, “Silence! And there’s a fresh one if you mouth off again.” That stuff would not have made it in, that was just goofing around. And that was Gareth.. He let us goof around, and that ended up becoming a tone of the character throughout the movie and ended up in the movie finally.”

Are you a big fan of Tudyk’s K-2SO? Let us know in the comments!