Andor writer and director Tony Gilroy revealed what went into creating some of the best monologues that Star Wars has seen, and how to make them powerful and effective while adding to the overall story of the characters.
Tony Gilroy gave perhaps one of the most value-packed talks of any panel on Day 1 of the Star Wars Celebration live stream. Going in-depth from a writer’s perspective on what makes the tale of Cassian Andor so compelling in the first season of his new show.
While reflecting on the first season, there was a particular focus on some of the characters’ incredibly emotional and impactful monologues at crucial moments in the narrative, with the likes of Marva’s Eulogy, Luthen Rael’s confrontation with ISB supervisor Lonni Jung, Kino Loy’s escape speech, and Karis Nemik all having standout moments.
How Tony Gilroy writes great monologues
The panel host, Kristin Baver, praised Gilroy on his monologue writing in particular and asked him what he thinks makes for a great Star Wars monologue. Tony Gilroy went into full detail in response, breaking down specific elements of his approach to creating dynamic monologues for a story, compared to standard dialogue writing techniques.
“To the writers out there, the musket has to be packed.” he explained, highlighting the importance of building up to a good monologue, ”you have to have some momentum behind it.”
“The person has to be in an emotional state to give it. You have to understand what it is they want to say.” Gilroy added, “And it can’t just be some bogus thing that they want to be speaking. It has to be worthy of the moment.”
He followed up by admitting that monologues are not too difficult to write for him in particular, sharing that scenes with multiple characters all being introduced at once is a far more daunting task for him to tackle while screenwriting episodes for the show.
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“I’ll be really honest with you. I’ve written a lot of them… they’re actually not the most difficult things to write. For me anyway. They’re not transactional. It’s really about the potency and ideas of what’s there.”
Adding emotion to character monologue
Tony Gilroy also emphasized the importance that factoring in emotion plays while writing monologues for characters, and the importance of trusting your judgment, “If it breaks your own heart, it will probably break somebody else’s heart.”
He also gave credit to the phenomenal cast of Andor who performed these lines. With actors like Andy Serkis, Stellan Skarsgard, and Fiona Shaw all brought the shine and heart that was needed to the cleverly crafted monologues that Gilroy had prepared.
Diego Luna, who was also featured in the discussion panel even chimed in with praise for the showrunner’s writing abilities. Luna passionately expressed that Gilroy’s intricate writing and understanding approach is what gives a soul to the characters we see on screen.
Tony Gilroy will get to explore more about these intriguing characters in Andor Season 2, which is currently in production and expected to be even more ambitious. Until then, we will just have to wait for more details about the Disney Plus show.