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Confronting an authoritarian strongman about his war crimes, Mon Mothma’s address to the Galactic Senate sees the future leader of the Rebel Alliance throw down the gauntlet against Emperor Palpatine. But drafting the rousing climax of her political evolution left Dan Gilroy, the writer of “Andor’s” Emmy-nominated episode “Welcome to the Rebellion,” with a daunting task: “This is a wildly historic speech in the ‘Star Wars’ canon, so there was always an imperative of anybody who touched it that this really needed a tremendous amount of thought and care.” Gilroy recently joined The Envelope via Zoom to annotate the four-minute oration.
Fellow senators, friends, colleagues, allies, adversaries. I stand before you this morning with a heavy heart. I’ve spent my life in this chamber.
“The speech that Mon’s giving here has two audiences,” Gilroy says. “The first group are these craven elected officials who have abandoned their posts and left their constituents at the complete mercy of evil. She’s condemning them. The second group she’s speaking to are the galaxy’s infinitely diverse inhabitants. Because Mon understands that the goal of unbridled authority is to make people feel helpless. To break them, to make them believe that resistance is something futile without chance of success.”
I came here as a child and as I look around me now, I realize I have almost no memories that predate my arrival and few bonds of affection that cleave so tightly.
Measuring just 269 words — three shorter than the Gettysburg Address — and featuring this allusion to the 16th president’s first inaugural, Mon’s speech draws inspiration from Abraham Lincoln as well as President Kennedy, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, Gilroy says. “Those speeches just have a ring to them. They have a gravitas to them, they have a wisdom to them, they have timeless sense of theme to them.”
Through these many years, I believe I’ve served my constituents honorably and upheld our Code Of Conduct. This Chamber is a cauldron of opinions and we’ve certainly all had our patience and tempers tested in pursuit of our ideals. Disagree as we might, I’m hopeful that those of you who know me will vouch for my credibility in the days to come. I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis.
“When you’re looking at Mon, and I know [actor] Genevieve [O’Reilly] believes this deeply, you’re looking at somebody who’s overcome their human frailty and their primal desire to survive,” Gilroy says. “She is an apostle of sorts. She has reached a point where her time has come. Fate’s knocked on the door; she doesn’t know if she’s going to get out of this alive, but she’s going to transmit to the world what she believes.”
The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.
Gilroy points to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ minister of propaganda, as a real-life analogue to those in Emperor Palpatine’s employ who are devoted to manipulating the truth. “It’s almost like mass hypnosis,” Gilroy says. “They’re putting you to sleep. They’re lying to you with bigger and bigger and bigger lies, and you stop sort of paying attention. So Mon’s trying to wake people up from that lethargy that’s been created by this dictatorship.”
This Chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza. What took place yesterday — WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY ON GHORMAN WAS UNPROVOKED GENOCIDE!
Mon’s intake of breath before the speech reaches its crescendo is purposeful, Gilroy says: “She needs to come in and communicate in a modulated way. It takes tremendous effort. Genevieve really displayed that — she’s almost trembling at first, to control herself. ... The bravery really builds, the bravery really climaxes, and the bravery is defined.”
YES! — GENOCIDE! — AND THAT TRUTH HAS BEEN EXILED FROM THIS CHAMBER! AND THE MONSTER SCREAMING THE LOUDEST? THE MONSTER WE’VE HELPED CREATE? THE MONSTER WHO WILL COME FOR ALL OF US SOON ENOUGH IS EMPEROR PALPATINE!
“Andor,” on which Dan collaborated with brothers Tony and John, reflects Gilroy family history. Their father, who was among the troops who liberated the Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany in 1945, taught his sons that such crimes against humanity are not to be forgotten, whitewashed or ignored.
Comparing this moment in the speech to “accusing Hitler of genocide in the Reichstag,” Gilroy suggests the term remains contentious to the present day because authoritarian regimes “will vehemently and violently combat anyone trying to say what they’re doing is anything other than righteous”: “Mon knows that this word is radioactive. And for her to use it, she is signing her death warrant. If they catch her, she will be executed for that word.”
