Star Wars: Andor’s Genevieve O’Reilly Explains the Development of Mon Mothma

Star Wars: Andor is premiering on Disney+ later this month, and it will see Diego Luna return as Cassian Andor before the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The show will also feature some other Star Wars staples, including Mon Mothma. The character was first played by Caroline Blakiston in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi and was later portrayed by Genevieve O’Reilly in a cut scene from Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. O’Reilly had the chance to play the role again in Rogue One as well as voicing the character on Star Wars: Rebels, and now she’s back again for Andor. Recently, O’Reilly had a chat with Entertainment Weekly about further developing the character for the upcoming Disney+ show. 

“We really get to develop her as a character, and we get to learn about her not just as a senator, but as a woman,” O’Reilly shared. “[We learn] what her life is like, what she has to wrestle with, what are the dangers to her life, what it costs to be her. Tony’s [Gilroy] writing is so intricate and so taut. It lives in this world of the spy genre, of a sociopolitical drama, and yet it’s set within a Star Wars world. So it feels universal and intimate all at once.”  

“I was always interested in her,” O’Reilly said of Blakiston’s original performance, “and each time I go to play her, I go back to that scene.” She added, “You can see when Caroline does that in that scene, for me, there was always a pain at the heart of it … You could see that she was carrying a pain, and I was really curious about what that was. What has happened in this woman’s life? What has it cost to be her? What are the sacrifices that she has had to make along the way to be that leader of a rebellion?”

“We see her talking to senators, and then we meet her at home with her husband,” O’Reilly teased of Andor. “We see the public and the private. We see her literally and figuratively take off her cloak and reveal herself as a woman in a way we’ve never seen before.”

Gilroy, who co-wrote Rogue One, is serving as the showrunner for Andor. Gilroy recently had a chat with Variety and talked about some original ideas for the series and explained why there won’t be any “fan service.” In fact, Gilroy told the outlet that folks don’t need to be fans of Star Wars to enjoy the show. 

Star Wars: Andor premieres on Disney+ on September 21st.