‘Andor’ creator responds to the show being called one of the best ‘Star Wars’ projects ever

The least you can ask out of your creativity is to make something that only you like, but when it resonates with a fan base as passionate as that of Star Wars‘, that’s when you know you’ve discovered the El Dorado of creativity.

And the spearhead of this glorious expedition is Tony Gilroy, showrunner and executive producer of Andor, the Star Wars political thriller that has left fans begging for more of the series’ rich dialogue, palpable political tension, and an ensemble cast that fuels these aforementioned aspects with all the gravitas of a golden city.

The applause for Andor has come in droves and goes to show just what the franchise is capable of when it gets the chance to veer into new territory with the appropriate guiding hands. And as it turns out, those hands became quite calloused as a result. In an interview with IndieWire, Gilroy revealed that Andor was no easy task. Hardly a surprise, given the sharply-polished end product.

I spent my whole life in the movie business, and I thought I was on some hard movies. I made some movies that were pretty hard movies to make… But all of that looks so easy now. I was so naive about what I was getting into when I started and how complicated would be. Everybody works hard. I’m just saying the scale of it, the amount of it, we were humbled — and are still.

He would go on to divulge the specifics of what made Andor such a herculean task, with a special nod to the larger writing workload and learning how to balance so many personalities in front of and behind the camera.

So when you put a team together of people that are super obsessed, and then you suddenly realize that you’re responsible for 700 pages of shootable material, and it all has to be designed from scratch because you can’t use anything that’s real but you want to make it real — you have the extra level of trying to make it real — it’s a thing. It’s a thing.

The first season of Andor is currently streaming on Disney Plus, with new episodes releasing every Wednesday until the season’s conclusion on Nov. 23. A second and final season is currently in development.