Star Wars: Alan Tudyk Reveals How Andor Showrunner Tony Gilroy Changed Rogue One

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story had a lot riding on it when it was released in 2016, being the first spin-off movie for that franchise in a galaxy far, far away. Things looked incredibly rocky for it though as the behind-the-scenes troubles became very public, resulting in a number of extensive reshoots and rewrites to the movie. In the end, it all worked out for the movie though as it grossed over $1 billion at the worldwide box office and has become one of the favorites of the Star Wars fandom (especially out of Lucasfilm’s most recent crop of releases). Speaking in a new interview, Rogue One star Alan Tudyk opened up about what it was like to have Tony Gilroy come in and work on the film’s additional photography, and what he changed.

“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 told Collider. “But Gareth (Edwards, credited director), 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.”

Tudyk went on to say that he looks back on filming the movie fondly despite being a challenge, noting moments that were shot and even put in the marketing that weren’t in the final cut.

“There was a certain point early on where the story shifted,” Tudyk added. “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.’….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.”

Sadly, despite Tudyk’s love for the character and Star Wars, he won’t be reprising his role for the upcoming Andor series on Disney+, at least not at first.