COREY NICKOLS/GETTY IMAGES FOR IMDB

BY  BRETT WILLIAMS, NASM

DIEGO LUNA IS barely late. I haven’t been waiting for him to join our call for much more than a minute, but he’s apologizing for his tardiness from the moment we say hello. We’re catching up on the day that the second (and final) season of Andor premieres on Disney+, officially closing the loop on a story Luna began telling almost a decade ago, in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. And as the show’s titular star, Luna takes his responsibility as its ambassador seriously. So much so that when he took the role this time around, he also signed on as an executive producer. As a producer, he says, “part of my job is to not waste my time”—which may explain his punctuality.

He’s also eager to dive deep into the show’s themes. Created by Oscar-nominated writer-director (and Rogue One screenwriter) Tony Gilroy, the series is one of the Star Wars universe’s most grounded—exploring the sociopolitical conditions that preceded the events of Rogue One and George Lucas’s original trilogy. That grounding is part of why the show is so acclaimed (season 1 boasts a 96 percent “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the response to season 2 so far has been rapturous) and why Luna was interested in reprising his role in the first place. “It’s a show about regular people and about their very personal and intimate lives,” he says. “And the aim of that is to tell you what the social and political climate is for rebellion to erupt—for this rebellion to erupt.”

DISNEY+

Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in Andor season 2

Star Wars has always featured seemingly ordinary people who turn out to be extraordinary—particularly those who at one point or another take up the name “Skywalker.” We first meet Anakin as a nerdy slave boy, Luke as a gawky farm kid, and Rey as a desert scavenger. They come from the margins of society only to become central figures in galaxy-wide conflict. But Rogue One and Andor, Luna says, are more interested in staying in the margins. “That’s the secret of the show: You’ve never seen a show about these people, even though they’ve always been there.” The world of Andor rejects the “great man” theory of history and instead explores the untold stories spread out across an entire people, small moments that power the engines of change. So it’s no surprise that our conversation veers into some serious topics—the politics of revolution, the experience of social marginalization, and the cyclical nature of history—which Luna covers at an eagerly rapid clip. (At one point, he needs to pause and translate his thoughts from his native Spanish into English.) 

And if it seems like he’s running out of time to cover it all, that’s because he is. After this season, Luna will likely be saying goodbye to the character for good. (Nine-year-old spoiler for Rogue One: Cassian Andor dies completing his final mission.) While it’s bittersweet, Luna says working backward is what ultimately unlocked Cassian for him. “It’s like making a historical film, or telling the story of a historical figure,” he says. “We know the events, we know what happened, but we don’t know: What was he thinking? Who was there? Now we’re  uncovering details behind a story we think we already know. That’s a fascinating storytelling tool.”

As season 2 kicks into warp speed, Luna spoke to Men’s Health about closing the book on Andor, his approach on set as an executive producer, and how he keeps returning to real-life history to create the fictional world of a galaxy far, far away.

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MEN’S HEALTH: You’ve talked about being a Star Wars fan growing up and about the responsibility that you feel to the audience. How have you taken that on?

DIEGO LUNA: I’ve got to tell you, it was very slow—the process of actually taking it in and understanding what this involvement in the universe of Star Wars meant, and what it was going to demand. At the beginning, I was invited to do a film that had a beginning and an end. That was 11 years ago. Everyone would tease me, like, “You’re going to be doing Star Wars forever.” And I was like, “No way—the ending is pretty definitive!”

But when I was invited to do this show...I think they called at the right moment. Obviously, they wanted to do a show called Andor, therefore they needed to know I wanted to do it, right? So I was invited to explore the possibility, and that gave me time to understand what was interesting, what was going to actually bring something new to what Star Wars already has. With Rogue One, we started in a great position where we were meant to be different—we were asked to be different. And because Andor had the privilege of being part of Rogue One, of being a prequel of that prequel, it gave us that same tonal freedom. We had the opportunity to do something that would be part of Tony Gilroy’s vision—something darker, complex, interesting, political, and realistic. Yes, we are in a galaxy far, far away, but somehow you sometimes forget about that. It feels like you’re just witnessing the lives of regular people.

MH: How did you create that very lived-in experience?

DL: Tony’s been really clear on the objective of the show: It’s a show about regular people and their very personal, intimate lives. And the aim of that is to tell you what the social and political climate is for rebellion to erupt—for this rebellion to erupt. And for that, he tells you the story on both sides of the equation, which I really love. That’s probably the big difference between Rogue One and this show: Rogue One is a movie about these rebels risking everything and sacrificing everything in order to complete their mission. But right now, Andor is about all the people in the chain of command on both sides, the stories of the people no one ever talks about and that history forgets, and all their little sacrifices. You go into the offices and apartments and bedrooms of these characters, before and after they go and execute the parts of the story that history does tell. The beauty of TV is that the writing is all about the characters. The way the second season is written, you can tell it’s written by someone who understands both the capacities and limits of this cast. The writing knows us as interpreters. It’s about how much we understand each other, how much we understand our characters, and how much Tony knows who he’s writing for, so we’re able to bring many layers to the material and get the best out of every moment.

MH: Cassian is portrayed as a normal guy—someone who is extremely capable but does not fall into the larger-than-life Jedi archetype of other Star Wars protagonists. Where did you turn for inspiration when bringing a character like him into this universe?

DL: I think it was all there in the logic behind the story. He has a speech in the first season where he talks about coming into an Imperial space facility and how petulant they are, how arrogant they are, that they don’t even think it’s possible for someone to sneak in. It’s a story about not being seen, and how that can become your best tool. I think that sticks; it’s something I’ve never forgotten. His biggest strength is that you’re not expecting that from him. In terms of reference, I think it had a lot more to do with history—real people, real stories. I didn’t look to cinema at all, because I think that is exactly where we were hoping not to end up. The idea was: How do we keep this grounded?  History has all those answers. And I didn’t have to look too far, because I grew up [in Mexico] hearing those stories and understanding how social movements have happened. All those references are there in Andor.

MH: How did real-life history come into the approach you took in telling this story? It’s set in the world of science fiction but feels very real, not to mention timely.

DL: I’ll tell you one thing: I think Tony’s writing is very precise and honest. Everything in this series has a point of view, and it’s a very well-informed point of view. He’s taking all the references he has in terms of the social and political climate for revolution or rebellion. He’s bringing in the context of the history he lived, about the history he grew up in, about the history he learned. And then all of us in the cast, we kind of went deep into finding those references for our characters. I’d guess my perspective is very different than Stellan [Skarsgård, who plays spymaster Luthen Rael], and that makes a very interesting combo of this diverse universe we are trying to portray.

I think this time makes us see these movies and series in a certain way, and 10 years later, they will be seen in a different way. But sadly, I don’t think it would stop feeling pertinent. You can take any piece of storytelling and time will resignify what you’re seeing. In a way, that’s what Andor does to Rogue One. If you watch Rogue One today, Andor will resignify the whole film. Suddenly you know what a character means when he says, “I’ve done terrible things for the Rebellion.” You have that image; you were next to him when he pulled that trigger. You understand what he means when he says, “We’re leaving everything behind for this.” Now you know what “everything” looks like and what loss actually represents to this character. You meet who he loved, who he trained with, who he learned from—and all of that makes you see that film differently.

COREY NICKOLS/GETTY IMAGES FOR IMDB

MH: You’ve talked a lot about the perspective of the series. How did being an executive producer help you clarify that perspective?

DL: I don’t see how I would be able to join a project like this without wearing the hat of a producer. Because as a producer, you’re there from beginning to end. You understand perfectly the perspective you’re representing through the whole process. To me, good films and good shows have one clear perspective or point of view that everyone follows. Otherwise, when you’re trying to please many points of view, you get lost. So protecting that one clear perspective is exactly what I meant to do here: to help others when they had questions, to support the designers who play a very important role in wardrobe, makeup, stunts, to bounce ideas off of each other.

One thing that was very cool about this season is that—even though it’s TV and there’s a showrunner or a mastermind behind it and a certain amount of rules to stay within—these blocks [of episodes, which are being released three at a time] each belong to a different director and writer, and the directors had the freedom to bring their own perspective into their episodes. But there were four people present from the beginning. One was obviously Tony, who was behind the idea, the writing, and behind every decision. Next to him was Sanne [Wohlenberg], who’s the executive producer that gets to orchestrate this machine. Then you have [Lucasfilm president] Kathleen Kennedy making sure all the resources are there for the machine to work, making sure we have the freedom for the show to exist and at the same time contain it within the big picture. Then there was me, and as an actor, you’re the one who is always on set. You’re the one answering immediate questions in that very crucial moment of executing these ideas. I had the responsibility of making sure everyone was reminded of Tony’s perspective and to help people understand that perspective.

©WALT DISNEY CO./COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION

MH: We already know where Cassian’s story ends from Rogue One, and now we’re learning how he got there from Andor. We’re not going to go all the way back to teen Andor, are we? Are you saying goodbye to the character?

DL: I think so. This whole structure of the season, breaking it into four chapters with each chapter as a year, came out of a conversation Tony and I had sitting in Scotland when filming season 1. Logistically, it was impossible to do the five seasons we had originally talked about, where each season would represent a year before Rogue One, and the fifth season would end in Rogue One. So how do we deliver that without spending two decades trying to get there? Each season took two and a half years of our lives! We had been working on season 1 for one and a half years, and we weren’t even done with the shooting. So we were like, “This is impossible. How do we do it? How can we make sure we deliver what we promised in the way we want?” Everything came from the logistics of that.

We already shot season 1 in blocks [of episodes], so Tony said, “What if we take this to the next level?” That’s how we came up with the idea behind this season. We were able to get to the end in the way we pitched at the beginning, and with respect not just to the story overall, but to all the characters you got to meet in that first season who need closure and need an end to their own stories. Then Tony went even further and brought in new characters, new planets, and new events. To me, this is the end. And not just the end, but a very graceful way to get to the end. We never had to betray our vision.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

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