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In the latest episode of The Envelope video podcast, “Monsters” co-stars Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez open up about the roller-coaster ride of playing Erik and Lyle Menendez and “Andor’s” Diego Luna reflects on 10 years of playing his “Star Wars” revolutionary.
Kelvin Washington: Hey, everybody, I’m Kelvin Washington. Welcome to The Envelope. I’m alongside the usuals, Yvonne Villarreal and Mark Olsen, and we’re excited about this one because, as you know, Emmy season is upon us, so therefore it is time for us to give our takes on who we’re looking at, some folks we’re hoping are contenders, maybe some shows as well, maybe off-the-wall picks. Mark, I’ll start with you. Who you got?
Mark Olsen: Well, I have to say, I am hoping for either “Hot Ones” or “Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney” in best talk series. That’s a category that is really dominated by the traditional talk shows. I’m a huge talk show aficionado. But these two shows that are eligible in the category are just so unusual and unconventional. And I think it just brings so much energy to what a lot of times can seem like a very “Oh, we know who’s going to win. It’s going be a guy named Jimmy” kind of thing.
Washington: That’s a good point with “Hot Ones.” I mean, it’s getting just as big of people as the more traditional late-night shows. So you can see it’s kind of paving the way for what can be in this new streaming and social media world.
Yvonne Villarreal: Why don’t we have our own shtick like that?
Washington: Since we’re there, what’s the level of hot we’re going? Out of five.
Villarreal: I think a three. Mark?
Olsen: Medium.
Washington: That’s a good number. Medium out of five. I’ll go three. That’s as far as I go. What shows, actors and actresses are you looking at, Yvonne?
Villarreal: It sort of ties together because some of these people may end up in a hospital from the heat factor. I have to say, I’m really hoping to see “The Pitt,” or Noah Wyle specifically, get some recognition. And I have a strong feeling that they will. I mean, this is a show everyone’s been talking about. And it’s on Max, but it sort of hearkens back to, like, the old-school broadcast kind of drama. The hook, though, is that the season is 15 episodes and each chronicles one hour of a shift. And I thought that was really innovative. So I hope that gets recognition.
I will also say, I hope we don’t forget about “Presumed Innocent.” That was the Apple TV+ series. It was another adaptation of Scott Turow’s novel of the same name from David E. Kelley. It starred Jake Gyllenhaal. And I really hope people don’t forget about that one.
Olsen: I know I always say this, but I find the Emmy eligibility window so much more — for some reason, like the Oscars is just sort of like what came out last year, but the Emmys, it’s such a specific and strange thing. And it’s so easy to forget about shows from a while ago because you do get so lost in things that have just come out that are still coming out, or this confusion of like, “Which season of what show are we talking about?”
Washington: You know where we’ve gotten to — maybe it’s a compliment to the genre, just where we are with television because of streaming, more traditional television — is that we’re now in a place where the look you get, “Oh, you haven’t seen?” We’re in that phase now. “You don’t watch ‘White Lotus’?” You’re like, “I’m sorry, I haven’t caught up on that one.” You can get ostracized from some chat groups.
Olsen: There’s only so many hours in the day.
Washington: Say that again for people. OK? Because, again, the judgment I get when I’m picking up my coffee ... Real quick, for me, the show’s solid — I won’t say the show necessarily, but him, I think he’ll get a little love: Sterling K. Brown in “Paradise.” The show’s good. I’ve enjoyed it, but I could see it not necessarily getting all the raves. But him, I think it’s been good to see, “Could he take a role, lead a show?” And I’ve enjoyed him in that one.
Villarreal: There’s nothing he can’t do. Yeah. He’s good in almost everything he does.
Washington: Absolutely been great to see him in this. So let’s go here, Yvonne, we’ll start with you. Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez. You had a chance to sit down with them. Tell us a little bit about it.
Villarreal: So the actors portray Erik and Lyle Menendez, respectively, in the Netflix true-crime series “Monsters,” the Erik and Lyle Menendez story. The Menendez brothers were thrust into the spotlight in the late 1980s and early 1990s for the killing of their parents. This was, like, wall-to-wall coverage. I remember it as a young child, just seeing it would overtake a lot of my children’s programming. A lot of interruptions. Court TV.
It was an interesting take on this case. You saw a lot of different perspectives, some controversial. But it’s really been sort of in the ether right now because the resentencing happened, where the brothers got resentenced, so there’s a possibility of parole for them. And we got into a little bit about where things stand right now.
Washington: So many people who maybe are even younger than when the case happened in the late 1980s, who are now infatuated with it, you know, just because of everything, they’re like, “Oh my gosh, how’d I miss this? I wasn’t a kid when this was happening.” Mark, turn to you. You had, of course, Diego Luna, “Andor.” Tell us some more.
Olsen: We were able to catch Diego as he was on his way to LAX for a flight out of the country at the end of a very long press tour that he’s been doing for “Andor.” I think this new season of the show with showrunner Tony Gilroy has just felt like a real achievement. It takes on espionage, it’s a wartime thriller, also a “Star Wars” story, but also very much about how revolutions start and the kind of people that set those sort of events in motion.
Diego’s been so involved in the production of the show, the sort of the storytelling of the show, besides just being the lead actor. You know, this began as a role that he played in the film “Rogue One.” And so now, for basically 10 years, he’s been playing this role on and off. And I think it just captures so much of what’s great about him as a performer. And so this has really just become one of the signature roles of his career.
Washington: And everybody at my other job talks about. Everybody’s bringing that show up, so I definitely put on the list of must-see for me. All right, without further ado, let’s get this episode started.
A judge’s decision to reduce the Menendez brothers’ sentence for killing their parents in 1989 enables a parole board to hear their case. Gov. Gavin Newsom could still intervene.
Villarreal: It’s hard not to begin with the recent news, which is that after more than 35 years in prison for the killing of their parents, Erik and Lyle Menendez were resentenced to 50 years to life in prison, which means they will be granted a parole hearing in the near-future. Cooper, I know you’ve been to one of the hearings. Can you talk to me about why it was important for you to be there?
Koch: It’s important to me because I just care about them so much. I had never met the family and they’re not usually here — they don’t live here — so it was a good opportunity to go and show my support and meet Tammy and Talia [the wife and daughter of Erik] and Anna Maria [Erik and Lyle’s cousin] and just all of the family, which was intense but also lovely. It was really, really nice.
Villarreal: What stood out to you about that experience? We’re so used to watching it from a distance, and I’m curious for you, after inhabiting the character for so long, to now be there.
Koch: It was pretty trippy, honestly, being in the courtroom and they’re talking about the case and the prosecutors are making their points. It was really strange and surreal, but I felt so lucky and happy to be there so I could just show my support.
Villarreal: Do you feel like you’re watching it as yourself?
Koch: I studied this stuff, I lived this in a fake way — maybe in a real way, because you really dive in. It was surreal and weird and fascinating also to just listen to what they were saying and just how different it was in the ’90s compared to now.
Villarreal: Nicholas, did you expect to connect so closely with this case after you wrapped? How were you taking in the news as it happened?
Chavez: You get into being an artist and you hope to be a part of some projects that have significant reach and impact people. And then, retrospectively about your career, you’d hope to be a part of [a] handful of projects that actually have social impact. And, so, to be part of this limited series that repositioned a 30-year-old case and made people see it in a different light, and ultimately results in them getting a resentencing, and now it’s up to the parole board, it’s remarkable. It’s a remarkable experience as an artist.
Villarreal: For both of you, this was the first time you were portraying real people. How do you wrap your head around something like that, knowing that this is such a well-known case and you’re gonna be asked to speak about it, people are going to want your opinions, people are going to want to know your thoughts on what happened? That’s a lot to take on, in addition to just understanding the character and how you’re gonna approach it.
Koch: I’ve known about it for such a long time and I’ve cared about them for such long time that it wasn’t difficult for me to have a very strong point of view and a place that I sat in really confidently in just my beliefs and my empathy and my care. Regardless of whether they were real people or not, I always want to do that with the people that I play. I always wanna know where they’re coming from and understand them and care deeply for them because it’s the only way that I know how to work. In terms of talking about it, I’m just like, I’m the crazy Leslie Abramson defender. If anyone comes over to me and they’re like, “Well, but they did this...” I’m like, “Well, actually they did because ...” I get kind of crazy, but I like that. I’m passionate about it. And so in that sense, it’s nice to have such a strong point of view, opinion.
Chavez: I had a bit of a different way in and a different way of handling it. Lyle and Erik went through similar challenges, but they’re ultimately very different people and they’re presented very differently within the series. I had to create a separation in terms of the way that I handled it artistically and then the way I talked about it. For me, it was about creating a high level of empathy with the character and understanding what his perspective would have been, what motivated him to do what he did, the kind of trauma that he experienced, what it might be like to be someone who’s mentally and emotionally stunted at 8, 9, 10 years old and still feels the responsibility of behaving like his dad. That’s almost in one box. Then they have this other box, which is the way that we talk about it in all the press and in all the interviews and things that we’ve done; it’s been really important to me to remain neutral because so much of what our show talks about is the way that media has an impact on our justice system. That’s what the back three or four episodes are. We talk a lot about not wanting to tip the scales. It’s something that I felt personally, that I didn’t want to tip the scales in any of the interviews that I gave, because ultimately I think that it’s a jury of one’s own peers, not the court of public opinion. That was just the stance that I took on it. I had to develop two very, very different buckets of thinking and ways of navigating in order to handle the artistic side of this as well as the interview side of it.
Villarreal: I want to talk about the audition process. Nicholas, I didn’t know that you lived near the house where [the killings] happened.
Chavez: Not quite a stone’s throw but pretty close. Close enough that I could walk.
Villarreal: And you visited it during your process of auditioning. Tell me about that.
Chavez: I would take daily walks to the house. I don’t know what I thought that would give me. Maybe I just thought that I could feel some sort of spiritual connection with the space. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience to this, where you just know that spaces carry energy with them. I would sit in front of the house and I would try to create in my mind’s eye and know that all of these things actually happened at this house that I’m standing in front of. And that was really heavy and took a few days of walking to the house to even begin to process. I was just trying to align myself with the story, with the people, with the place as intimately as I possibly could from as early as I possible could in the process.
Villarreal: Did you see other people doing it? I know since the show aired, more people have gone [to see the site], but were you seeing tour buses when you were there or [heavy pedestrian traffic]?
Chavez: No, I think that it had largely been left alone, and I didn’t see any other psychotic actors doing what I was doing, but ...
Koch: I’m surprised you didn’t see me. I was there.
Villarreal: You were there?
Koch: I was there, girl.
Chavez: Yeah, we talked about that some.
Koch: We were passing ships in the night.
Villarreal: Tell me.
Koch: I went a couple times. It makes it feel more real if you’re there.
Chavez: So Cooper’s the other psychotic actor that was there.
Koch: I went one time and I was parked outside, just kind of watching and there was a dog groomer’s truck that pulled in, and I guess whoever was living there at the time was getting their dogs groomed, and this woman walks out of the front door with the dogs to give them to the groomers or whatever and I was like, “OK, this is my shot. I’m gonna walk over...” And I walk over and I’m standing there and I’m like, “Hello,” and she’s looks at me weird and I was like, “Hi, this is so crazy but I’m auditioning to play one of the brothers ... Are the owners home? Is there any way I could talk to them?” She just looked at me and was just like, “No,” didn’t even say anything.
Chavez: We did get to visit the house while we were in production.
Koch: We did end up getting to go through it.
Chavez: Which was an experience.
Villarreal: Tell me.
Koch: Massive. Structurally, it was similar to the set, but the ceilings were huge. The rooms were massive. The upstairs room that was Kitty and Jose’s room was like a hotel lobby; like, there was a whole living room in it. That’s the one thing that I remember the most about it.
Chavez: The living room’s huge. A lot of it’s been redone, but it still bears some pretty striking similarities. Like Lyle’s guesthouse, that’s all still there in the back — renovated, but it’s all still there.
Koch: It really spoke to how wealthy they were. The hugeness of the house was like bigger than I thought it was. And there was energy there.
Villarreal: Did you go in the room?
Koch: Yeah. And surprisingly, there wasn’t that much ...
Villarreal: You didn’t feel the juju there?
Koch: I didn’t really feel much in there, actually.
Villarreal: Where did you feel it?
Chavez: For me, what was freaky was some of the artwork that the owner had hung up there. They were these really nice oil paintings. And there was this one of this woman, which would have been a creepy painting in and of itself, but the oil had melted in such a way where it had streaked tears through the woman’s eyes, as though she was crying. They said they brought in art experts who had said, “The house is in perfect condition. There’s no reason that the climate would have caused the painting to do this.” So something very, very weird happened for it to streak through her eyes and make it look like tears — that’s insane.
Koch: Yeah, it was spooky. Where I felt it the most was in the backyard. There’s a pool where there used to be a tennis court. We went outside for the first time, and I remember standing there and I just felt really emotional because I just could feel all of times that Erik had — both of them — had been playing tennis there and just the trauma of that place. It was intense.
Villarreal: There’s so much source material, whether news clips or books or audio. How was it for you to mine through all that, and were there specific things that really helped you latch onto Erik and Lyle?
Chavez: There’s several books written about them, but there’s also the Court TV footage — that’s where you get a lot of their behavior from. Outside of that, there’s not a lot of video. I’d say old photos really, really help. They really come to life; they’re the souls of their family. You can also pick up their relationship in some of those old photos. But the Court TV footage was interesting because you have to be cognizant of the fact that people present [themselves] a certain way when they’re on trial. It’s a pretty unnatural situation to be in, where you’re on trial for your life for murdering your parents because you were sexually abused. The way that you talk and the way that you present yourself, it’s different than the way that we would. ... Understanding what the behavior truly was came as a mixture of the Court TV footage and then all the other research that I have to meld together with that.
Koch: He’s very small, he stutters, he speaks with a lot of tension in his mouth, his shoulders are forward — all of that behavior I wanted to implement so that I could support that what he was saying happened to him was the truth. I really did believe that the person that was on the stand was him. I really believe that is who he was. There even are some times in the testimony where he smiles or he laughs. There’s a moment where Lester Kuriyama, one of the prosecutors, asks him a question and something gets miscommunicated or Leslie shuts him down, and then the jury laughs, and he kind of like smiles and looks at them. Those moments fed me a lot; they just reminded me of his innocence and his youthfulness and how he really is just, like he says in the Barbara Walters interview, he’s just a kid.
Villarreal: I feel like you guys could teach a course on the Menendez case at this point.
Koch: I definitely could.
Chavez: And it’s not always that you get as much prep time as we did. We had the strike, so we had the benefit of some time before we had to go shoot.
Villarreal: How much time did you spend building the brotherly dynamic? How did you figure out, “How do we play them separately, but also how do we play them together?”
Koch: We didn’t really. We waited until we started, and then it was really in our rehearsals and in the shooting of it that we found it. We really took the time to prepare individually and to get our own sense of our characters that we were going to play. I think that benefited us because then we came together really, really prepared and ready to play. It just became an organic process that was really natural. And the reality of how it was happening also was what brought us together. We both had never experienced doing a giant TV show like this, especially like — what you said — with the pressures of having them be real people, and it’s Netflix, there’s a lot of eyes. We were both experiencing the same thing at the same time, which I think allowed us to bond and have that close relationship.
Villarreal: How does Ryan Murphy talk to you about —
Koch: [laughs] How does Ryan Murphy talk to you ...
Villarreal: Yeah, end of question.
Koch: He doesn’t like when people imitate him, so I’m not going to do that.
Chavez: He came to our initial callback, which we didn’t know that he was going to be at, like 20 minutes early just to field any questions that we had and make sure that we felt comfortable. That’s how he started; then, throughout the process, he was just making sure that we felt well supported, would take us out to the occasional dinner, that sort of thing.
Koch: He gave us IV drips if we were feeling ill.
Villarreal: My boss never does that.
Koch: Maybe you just need a new boss. Ryan Murphy should be your boss.
Chavez: “Excuse me, I need the Ryan Murphy treatment.”
Koch: There was one time when we were filming at the prison and I ate something or I got really sick for a day, and then he has an IV guy who comes. Or if we were just feeling really run down, because it’s long hours, it’s five days a week of shooting and —
Chavez: It is interesting working with him, though, because he just drops by. But do you notice how he always drops by when it’s, like, a really important scene that you know he wants to be perfect? He’ll drop by sometimes when he has a really, really specific vision for how we want something done, which is cool to be directed by him as well.
Villarreal: What’s a note from Ryan Murphy that stands out to you about your performance?
Koch: I remember in the beginning — which freaked me out so bad, I thought I was gonna get fired — I kept hearing from people on set, and then finally I had a call with him, that I was crying too much. And I was like, “But that’s in the script, that’s what is happening, it’s not my fault. I’m just doing what they’re saying in the scripts.” And they’re like, “Well, we’re changing the script. We’re rewriting it.” And I’m like, “But actually, that’s literally the character.” They say on the stand, “Why were you [Erik] always crying? Why were you crying so much? Why were always so emotional?” So I was like, “That’s what I’m doing.” But I remember feeling like, “Oh, God, no.”
Villarreal: Did he or anyone else advise you against reaching out to the brothers in the process leading up to the show? And when did you decide, “I think it’s time”?
Chavez: It was more so just a collective conversation that we all had. Honestly, I think Cooper and I both just wanted to come from as informed a perspective as we possibly could. But it was a conversation that we had with the whole team and, ultimately, we decided that it would best to wait until after we had wrapped principal photography.
Villarreal: Because there was the moment where Erik criticized the show on Facebook and said it was inaccurate, the details of their lives. How soon after that did you, Cooper, connect with him, and what can you share about what those conversations were like?
Koch: I spoke with him for the first time the night before the show came out, which was wonderful, and I really wanted that connection just before, because I knew that there were going to be some issues that they have, as well as the family was going to have their own sort of criticisms and fears and problems because it’s their lives. We were also not doing a straight Menendez defense show. Everybody gets their turn to share what they believe happened. So, yeah, I think I saw him that weekend. He had just started to hear good things about some of the parts in the episodes and about Episode 5. I just told him, “I get it. It’s really difficult and it’s difficult to see that stuff.” I also think there was a lot that they — because he hadn’t seen it — there was lot that people were hearing and saying, and it was being taken out of context. For example, like Dominick Dunne’s stuff, people were taking it out of the context, being like, “Oh, well, this is in the show, so that means that they’re saying that this is what happened,” which is not true. We were showing his point of view and perspective, which was neither true nor false. I have my own opinions of what I think was true or false, but that was what we were doing. We weren’t being like, “These are the facts, this is what happened.” It was like, “No, that’s what this person thinks.” I think people really took that and ran with it and were ready to jump in and defend [them], which I love, but also, it’s like, “No, let’s take it back, wind it back. Watch the entire episode. Don’t skip through it and see why this is being told this way.”
Villarreal: What were you least prepared for coming into these roles and the media attention that would surround the dramatization of this real-life case?
Koch: I think the ups and downs of it all. I’ll get real with you for a sec — this show coming out. It comes out, there is all this attention, there’s all these things that we’re now going to and having these interviews and going here and going there and all this tension and people starting to recognize you and all this stuff and then there is this like postpartum feeling of like ... “Now what?” I’ve felt a roller coaster of feeling really proud of the work and really happy and so grateful. And then periods of like, “Oh, this feels weird. Why do I feel anxious or sad or confused or scared?”
Chavez: It comes at you really fast, and because it is a roller coaster and the highs are so intense, whenever there’s like even the slightest lull — whether there’s no news about the case or something like that — there’s so much displaced energy. Because you still are feeling all of that from the high and then it almost like crashes, and you don’t know what to do with it. It’s wanting to feel some sort of ball-moving-forward type feeling, like whether it’s like the news that we just got or whatever that might be. But that can’t happen every day.
Villarreal: I’m curious for your thoughts on the public reception, because I was at the premiere and I remember the sort of discomfort some people had of like, “Should I be laughing at this part?”
Koch: Here comes the hard hitters, get ready!
Villarreal: Like you said, Ryan introduces this idea of the incestuous relationship coming from the point of view of Dominick Dunne. And there’s this weird thing that you see on social media, where people are having fun with that aspect.
Koch: That Nicholas Chavez edit.
Chavez: Wait, which edit?
Villarreal: There’s so many.
Koch: The big one. Yeah, history repeats itself.
Villarreal: But when you’re reading the script, are you concerned — you can’t predict how it’s gonna be received, but are you like, “Are we gonna lose the nuance in this age of memes and social media of, like, the gravity of this”?
Chavez: I think that that’s always a concern. It’s like a lot of fast-food media. But I think the great news is that a lot of people watch the show start to finish. While there were a lot of different perspectives that were shared, I think a lot people took away from it that there were lot of really hurt and wounded people involved, not just from the brothers but also the parents. And that’s a really important takeaway.
Villarreal: I want to talk about one of the standout episodes, which was “The Hurt Man.” It seemed incredibly challenging — it’s basically a one-shot. I know you you did several takes, and I think they used the last one. But talk to me about preparing for something like that. What does the night before that look like?
Koch: I had eight months with those words, and I just read it every day. I wrote it out a lot. I remember the day of, I went to [co-star] Ari [Graynor’s] house because we had a late call. We did a read of it — really flat, no acting. We just said the words once to just get them out. I was so nervous to do it because there’s so much pressure, but I was prepared and I was really excited to do [it] as well because I feel like my prep for the entire show was working on that episode. So to finally get to do it was so rewarding and thrilling. It was just me and Ari, and we had built such a strong friendship at that point that it was just so exciting. I also knew that we had a second day planned to do it again if we needed to. So I was like, “If I suck the first day and I don’t get it, then at least I have another day to get it.” That gave me comfort. But there’s no one else. It’s just you guys; the camera doesn’t move; it’s for 33 minutes. So the pressure of that and just wanting to get right — one, to get it right for the show, but also just do good by Erik — was sitting with me. I remember I called my therapist in the trailer before, and I just started crying and was like [mimics talking through tears], “I’m doing it. I’m doing it today.” He was so proud and gave me really nice words, and it was a super special day and time.
Villarreal: So you were able to sleep the night before. You weren’t hurling the night before or the day of?
Koch: I don’t remember the night before, really. I just remember the day of. I probably slept. I was probably tired from the day before, from when we were shooting whatever we were shooting that day.
Chavez: That’s the thing that’s so funny is like, I get asked this question sometimes, like, “How do you decompress in between days?” I’m like, sometimes you don’t; I just kind of roll one into the next.
Koch: There were times too when I would get home and I wouldn’t even turn the light on. I would just get in bed, go to sleep.
Villarreal: Then there’s Lyle, who’s very much about the performance, whether it’s giving the eulogy at his parents’ funeral or in the courtroom. He’s aware that how they come across in the courtroom is so important. Talk about that and how that sort of informed you giving Lyle’s testimony.
Chavez: Well, Lyle’s testimony is a very unique thing. Because we talk a lot about Lyle’s mask and feeling the need to represent yourself as your father or feeling the need to represent yourself as someone who’s more successful or smarter than you are. And who could blame him? When you’re operating at such a terrible developmental disadvantage because of sexual abuse, that’s nothing short of heartbreaking. But also, because of the way that he grew up, he did have to kind of put his best foot forward always. In Episode 4, we get a little bit of that backstory, but then in Episode 7, the mask drops not just for his attorneys but for the whole world. And that particular section of the Court TV footage, in my opinion, I think you’re seeing the real Lyle there. And it’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch him actually take that mask off in front of everyone. And so it hit me really, really hard. And that spot in Episode 7, I think, is very truthful to him and very truthful to his experience.
Villarreal: It’s been a while since you guys wrapped production, but obviously you’re still doing press for the show, talking about it. Do the characters still feel active to you in your mind or have you put them to bed?
Chavez: I think you always carry some symbol of the character with you; you’re always married to it in some way, shape or form for the rest of your life, but certain behavioral aspects or ways of thinking that just creep their way into your psyche, those hang out longer than you might think.
Koch: I always tried to make it a priority and a practice to really step in and really step out, even while we were shooting. I don’t think I ever really had any parts of what I had inhabited left with me. I left that when I left the soundstages, and that was very painful. I don’t think anything’s been left with me except for just the love and care and support that I feel for both of them. I talked to Erik yesterday, and I just think he’ll always be a part of my life. And he’s so excited and passionate about this next chapter of his. He was just saying how his whole mission, and what he wants to dedicate his life to, is prison reform and making huge change for people who also have LWOP [life without parole] who he knows. I think a lot of people think that like, “Oh, they’re just going get out of prison and then they’re going to have their lives back and they’ll go off.” No, they’re going to be so involved in the prison system and trying to make a lot of change. Green Space [the beautification program the brothers launched in prison] is still gonna happen. He’s still going to teach his programs. He’s going to be going to the prison a lot, and he’s just so passionate about that being what he wants to do. That was just so inspiring and beautiful, and I want to help him in any way I can. So if anything’s left with me, it’s just that, which I’m so thrilled about. As he would say, he’s jazzed. He kept being like, “I’m jazzed about it.”
Olsen: This season in particular feels very plugged into things that are happening in our real world right now. There’s immigration sweeps for undocumented workers, a conversation about whether or not certain events should be called a genocide. Was that a product of the production delays that were caused by the Hollywood strikes? For you, that sense of right now-ness, where do you think that comes from in the show?
Luna: I like answering this question this way: Imagine the show coming out 10 years ago. You would probably say the exact same [thing], and you would find the reference to that day and you would be like, “Oh, my God, are you talking about such and such issue?” “Are you talking about the relation between Mexico and the States?” And then probably it’ll work in another 10 or 20 years. The sad thing is that we repeat ourselves. ...
Sadly, we don’t seem to learn from what happened before, and we keep hitting the same issues and the same problems. And I think that the series is very relevant because it’s made with care. And we want to talk about things that matter to us. And therefore, this can matter to others. And you suddenly, in the best possible way, use this screen as a mirror and you go like, “Wow, they’re talking about what I just read on the news,” and you’re like, “No, not really.” We were not trying to predict the future, if anything we were reflecting on our past.
Olsen: Because it gets to the heart of what is so special about the show, that this is the streaming prequel to a movie that was itself a prequel to a movie that’s almost 50 years old now. There’s no reason for the show to be as good as it is. And to be well made as it is—
Luna: That’s a good way to start, like, “How did you manage to do this?”
Olsen: But have you been surprised by the response to the show, in that it has not just been for the “Star Wars” faithful? Critically, with awards voters, it’s kind of reached a whole other audience from just “Star Wars” folks.
Luna: “Rogue One” happened almost 10 years ago — 11 years ago, in fact, we started working on that. It was a film that was meant to be different, to come out of nowhere, to be unique in the universe of “Star Wars,” to have a beginning and an end, a very definitive ending also, and to have characters that normally you don’t pay attention to in this universe. All those wonderful stories behind this rebellion that you’re not aware of. And the film came out and audiences really responded. And then Lucasfilm said, “Let’s bring something like that,” but in the universe of these long-format pieces that “Star Wars” was about to start working on. And so we were meant to be different. We were meant to be more grounded, more gritty, more political, more complex and mature. That was the idea. We were really hoping to deliver something that you would describe as a different thing in this universe and that you say, “Wow, this is something I wasn’t expecting.” I mean, that was the exact goal of our show.
The cast tells you clearly that what we’re looking for is for a very realistic approach. And we were going to use this long format to actually be patient and witness the intimate life of regular people. “Andor” is a beautiful excuse to tell the story of a revolution. How does a revolution happen? What’s the political climate, social climate that has to exist in order for an insurrection to appear? And so we were hoping to do that in the first season, and then people celebrated the show for those reasons. Not for something else, people celebrated the show for the same reasons we decided to do it. And I mean, you don’t get a writer like Tony Gilroy and you don’t give him all the support and freedom to execute something if you’re not looking for this. I wouldn’t be there, you wouldn’t have Stellan [Skarsgård] and, I mean I’m not going to say names because it’s a beautiful cast and very talented and complex actors that are looking for deepness. And the show is aiming for that. I’m really pleased with the response, obviously. I don’t take it for granted, obviously. But we were hoping to get that. We worked on this show like we do film. It takes two years and a half to do a season. For us, it’s the work of four movies, basically. We dedicate that amount of time and then we have directors that have integrity, that have a perspective, and that comes into the mix too. So I think we worked really, really hard to get here, and I’m very proud of what’s happening.
Olsen: Can you talk a little bit about the structure of this season? I don’t know of another show that’s quite done this before, where it’s being released in four blocks of three episodes each, where there’s a writing-directing team that takes on each block. It does present one single arc, but it also, it feels like four little movies along the way. What were the benefits of having the season structured like this?
Luna: I’ll tell you the whole story. We were half of the way on shooting Season 1. And we had a moment, Tony and I — we were shooting in Scotland, and we were talking about how it was just impossible to pretend to do five seasons of these. The idea was always to do five seasons. Each season was going to be a year before we get to “Rogue One.” That’s what the story was going to cover. So the first season covers the first year, or the fifth year, and then we talked about, “Well, we have to somehow get to the beginning of ‘Rogue One’ without turning myself into 60 years old and pretending to be this guy.”
So we were already shooting in blocks. Sanne [Wohlenberg], our amazing producer, the one that builds the machine that can actually execute this show, she structured everything in four blocks. So each block has a director, and one block prepares and starts to shoot, then halfway [through] the other is prepping, and then starts to shoot. And that way we cover these 12 episodes. We were already shooting like that for production reasons. So then Tony said, “What if we do four blocks and each block is a year?” And that was the moment where we said, “OK, that’s it.” That way we can deliver what we promised, which is the full story, all the arc of these characters till the moment “Rogue One” starts and make sure we can do it in another season, and also another season that would have the same amount of work of preproduction that the first season had.
We were not going to rush things. We knew that was a rhythm. We knew the design takes time. Shooting in stages takes time. [Sets] need to be designed and built, and then you have to work on them and then bring them down and build something else and then work on that one. And then there’s another really cool thing about the blocks. It got better shaped on the second season, which is then [when] directors can come in and actually bring something. Tony, he knows collaboration better than anyone, and he gives us all the tools needed for us to execute, all the tools that a director needs. The preproduction of each block takes three months of work. So the director arrives to the show three months before they start to shoot. That’s like a movie, that’s the amount of time you prep a movie sometimes. So directors have enough time to get ready, but once they’re ready to execute, Tony leaves them alone. There’s no writers on set. It’s not like other shows on TV where you have a writer on set checking in. Directors own their process. Once they’re directing, they have producers behind them to support them, and we are there, but it’s their job to deliver. And producers are watching dailies and commenting and supporting, but there’s a moment where directors can bring their perspective, their point of view, into the mix. And I think all of that makes this show special, at least in the world of TV. I mean, I’m not an expert. I just did another TV show before, also two seasons. But this one works very different. And it does feel that those blocks have kind of like a beginning and an end, a perspective, a point of view, a director, a team. And then as an actor, you are what’s linking them, you’re the one who moves from one to the other, reminding directors where you’re coming from, what’s happening. And so, yes, also as actors, the team, we glue them together somehow.
Olsen: One thing I appreciate so much in the show is how it’s about how these big transformative moments can really be boiled down to just individual people, really small things are what create bigger events. There’s a wonderful moment in the very first episode, your character has to give a little pep talk to a woman who’s new to the rebellion, and you say to her, “You’re coming home to yourself.” I found something really beautiful and inspiring in that moment. Can you talk a little bit about that, what that meant to you as an introduction to where Cassian’s at as this season begins. He seems much more committed to the rebellion. He’s really made a turn from where he was in the first season.
Luna: This series, both seasons, are full of those lines that you go like, “My God, this guy, he nails it.” He has these characters in this season, but also in the first one, that have these beautiful monologues and beautiful lines that they deliver about what it means to get involved, to join, to be part of a community, to believe in change. The risk of the structure is that we have to fill the blank spaces. There is so much we don’t see that we as audience, and we also as performers, we have to fill and we have to find enough information in what we see to understand what happened before. And I think that’s another great thing that this season has. When you hear that speech, you understand what that year was for him. The learning he had to go through. You see a lot of Luthen there. Suddenly he’s learning from the best, and he has becomea strong figure in this movement and for this team. And he is finding the leader that he can become.
He has also that kind of beautiful quality of actually giving time to people. It tells you about how open he is, how much he has changed since the last time we saw him, and how important it was to commit after what happened in Ferrix in Season 1. I love that as soon as we see him out, he’s free to communicate with the outside world in Episode 3, he calls home and we understand that home is Bix. You get the whole picture, like, what this year was. And so, all the answers are there in the dialogue or in the actions. And it’s cool because it challenges audiences to go, “Wait a second, what? Oh, yes, I get it.” And it’s there, if you go back, you go like, “Oh, yeah. It’s true, the answer was there.”
Olsen: And now, as much as we can make the show sound very heady and cerebral, it still is a really exciting action show. All the scenes on the planet of Ghorman, for a while it’s like a really cool wartime thriller, and then it builds to what I think is Episode 8, that just really huge scale riot and action sequence. What was shooting something like that like? That whole episode just seems like it would have been really strenuous to do.
Luna: We pay attention to all that action you expect in a “Star Wars” show. The adventure is there. And the size, the scale of the show, as you just said, is huge. It’s a big production, and it happens also because of the way we shoot it. We shoot it old school. We work with the stunts for weeks, we put everything together, things blow, there is effects that are actually just there, [practical] effects on set. And we spend a lot of time working on making those moments actually happen. And yes, there is excitement. I think we can have that because revolutions are also romantic. There’s also something naive and romantic and young about them, the idea of change being possible and the hope and the excitement is there. But you said Episode 8 and that, it’s very sad. What we see there, it’s sad. And shooting that was very intense. Very intense, physically also, for all of us. But we have an amazing team. The stunts, for example, [stunt coordinator] Marc Mailley, he doesn’t just choreograph; he tells story with the way all of these events happen. And you can see the different factions that make this rebellion exist and all of the different kind of training and background of characters you can see in the choreographies and in the fights. It’s a lot of work.
Olsen: One of the things that I think also makes this series so interesting within the world of “Star Wars” is the way in which so much attention is still given to the Imperial characters. I know I am surprised, when I’m watching the show, how emotional I feel and how attached I become to some of those characters. In particular Denise Gough’s character of Dedra Meero, what happens to that character in particular is just devastating. And I was shocked watching it that felt for her as much as I did. Has that been something that’s been important to you?
Luna: This is about a revolution and there are sides to a revolution. And Tony doesn’t judge characters. There is no good and bad. I mean, Syril [played by Kyle Soller] is a romantic. If you go through his story, he’s a true romantic and he believes, but he can see very little. That’s his problem, I guess, but he has a purpose. He’s in a search. And characters are rounded, and we take time to witness both sides of the equation without judging. That makes the show very rich and interesting and unique again, because normally you hear about good and bad people, and the world is not like that. That’s why this show has that feeling of a realistic piece about history somehow, because there’s moments where you can almost forget that you’re in this galaxy far, far away and you just see human behavior. And revolutions are very diverse and very rich in terms of characters. That’s totally Tony Gilroy’s perspective: If I’m gonna talk about revolution, we gotta talk about everything around a revolution. That social climate I was talking about before, where there’s people that are actually motivated to move forward with their beliefs. And that happens on both sides.
Olsen: This second season of “Andor,” you all have said that it’s the end of the story because it bumps up against “Rogue One” —
Luna: It’s not the end of the story. The end is “Rogue One.” Of Cassian’s story.
Olsen: Is there any chance of finding a way to tell more story with Cassian? Could there be a third season?
Luna: No. A third season of this show is impossible. It’d have to be another show. But this show, you’ve seen the end. This show ends where it ends, and the only way to keep seeing Cassian is playing “Rogue One.” There is nothing else. When I finished “Rogue One,” and people asked me, “But is there a way you can come back?” I was like, “No, there is no way.” There’s no way I can come back. We have an ending. The beauty of that film is that the ending happens, and it delivers that definitive sacrifice this team does for the rebellion, and that’s it. And I thought that was it. Now I can tell you again the same answer, and we’ll see what happens.
Olsen: But having lived with this character and in this world now for 10 years, what is it like for you to be leaving it behind?
Luna: It’s going to stay with me forever. The films, and now with [streaming] platforms, they’re there for me to watch and for new audiences to find it. But also it’s important to close things. And I love the idea of finishing something like “Andor” and saying goodbye to this character in a moment like this one, where I’m so pleased of what I’ve made, in a moment also where I am so proud and I am so attached to the community that I work with. It’s beautiful to finish this way. And it should be sad and it should be difficult, because that means it’s special and unique. I can’t compare this experience to anything else I’ve done. I’ve never been part of a project for 10 years. I have never been a part of a team that experienced a whole decade together. This is unique in my life, and because of that, it’s beautiful that it ends on a positive note, in a moment where we’re all happy to see each other, and we are excited to celebrate what we’ve done, and that’s it. And then I have to move on and find something else and try again and tell another story and find another character.
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