SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers relating to both Seasons of Andor
“We wanted to weave a story about revolution that happened to be in the Star Wars universe, so we were not making decisions because it was Star Wars, but because it was right for that concept,” says Luke Hull of Andor, the show on which he was Production Designer and Exec Producer.
Andor is Tony Gilroy’s Disney+ series that follows a cast of characters including Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and traces a burgeoning rebellion, a story that was picked up in the movie Rogue One. The espionage, politics and action play out over an enormous vista, which became even broader in Season 2 with the addition of Ghorman, Mina Rau and other locales.
The team moved at light speed to make Season 1 happen and that helped lay the ground for Season 2, which is up for 14 Emmys, including Production Design.
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“When we started Season 1, it was very much a fast-forward take — I met Tony, we went straight into a writers room and we had a week,” say Hull, who is up for his second Emmy after landing one for his work on Chernobyl.
“We went into Season 2 with a little bit more of: ‘Okay, I think we know what we’re doing’. At the same time, we knew we weren’t doing [a story spanning] one year this time. Tony said if we do this again, we’re doing one more series and we’re done, and that one series will be like four movies, and each movie will [span] a year.”
He continues: “We very much went in knowing that not only would we be doing as much as Season 1, we’d probably be doing more. We weren’t building a massive set and knowing we were using it for four or five episodes. We were not coming back to a planet like we did with Ferrix. It was complex in that sense, both practically and just the sheer volume of design.”
The EP and Production Designer took Deadline on a tour of some of those key Season 2 locations of the Lucasfilm-produced series.
Ghorman: From Twill To Tumult
“Though it’s canonical, we’ve never been there,” Hull says about Ghorman, the influential planet that has achieved galactic renown for the textiles it produces and is seen in live-action form for the first time in Andor. Ghorman is in the sights of the Empire, which wants its natural resources, and events lead to a bloody massacre in the main plaza. The set was the largest for Season 2, in the same way Ferrix was for Season 1.
Hull says his early ideas centered around Middle Eastern themes, but the final design leans more towards Europe. “Suddenly it came into focus, the Ghor are more Italian, they’re more French. I was using Turin and Milan as reference points. Obviously, there’s the kind of French Resistance vibe, which I think also comes from costume and things like that. The palette was very based on Travertine, a stone that you find quite a lot in Italy.”
Hull breaks down the detail: “Parts like the cafe became very important although that was never originally in the script. It was something we just kept coming back to because it gave a sense of; ‘Oh, there was life here, people came, they talked, they sold things, they discussed ideas’. And then you come back a year later [after Imperial forces have moved in], and it’s quieter, it’s more locked down. Hopefully it feels coherent and Ferrix and Ghorman feel distinctly different and yet part of the same tapestry.”
Mon Mothma Travels Home
Chandrila is the home planet of Genevieve O’Reilly’s character, Senator Mon Mothma, a key figure in the politics of the show. As with Ghorman, it is part of Star Wars lore but had not been seen on screen before. Andor transports viewers to Mon’s Chandrilan estate, the setting for a three-day wedding.
“Going to Mon’s family estate in the countryside was something really smart that Tony did. We kind of based it on those islands out of New York, or Tuxedo Park, or something like that, where everyone’s built these mansions that are dotted around,” Hull says.
“I wanted to build on the fact that we’d had her embassy home in Coruscant and we had tried to make that a kind of like plastic version of Chandrila. That was their Number 10 Downing Street, or their embassy, but not their home. It was nice to be able to build on that and be like, this is the family Castle, this is their culture, this is a sort of feudal Japan meets Scandi meets Scottish Castle.
The Senate & Valencia
The Senate
The Senate is the political heart and, along with its immediate surroundings, the setting for both politicking and high action as Mon Mothma challenges the Empire. “One of the biggest issues for me was knowing we had to tackle the Senate and what is that, given it has already been very much established in people’s minds and also knowing that what they’ve done in the [movie] prequels wasn’t really the aesthetic of our show.”
Hull continues: “We knew we had to break more out of the Senate and it needed a lot of playing space. We went across France and Spain, and we fixed on Valencia because of its City of Arts and Sciences. We took that park and modeled it and put it into a wider model with the Senate offices and all the other bits and started building out the world in very much the same way we had done with Chernobyl.”
Another challenge was working out the fundamentals of the building. “We couldn’t find anything in the archive that gave a proper breakdown of how the Senate worked other than you’ve got the arena bowl in the middle where everyone congregates. We worked out, level by level, how it would work and based it very simply on how you would design a building like this. You’d have all these different layers. You’d have elevators that would have to travel at angles. You’d have these ring corridors.”
Mina-Rau: Against The Grain
Agricultural planet Mina Rau was another setting fresh to Andor with its sweeping grain fields and small communities. “That was a blank page,” says Hull, who is repped by Casarotto Ramsay and CAA.
“When they all fly off Ferrix at the end of Season 1, it’s like, where do they go? And so, they turn up in season two [on Mina-Rau] and we had been talking a lot about this collective farming planet. The idea is that you go out there and you’re free. You’re in your sector with your people and you make your own food, and you will also harvest for the Empire, but you have this slightly bohemian life.
“It was almost supposed to be that they found a piece of paradise. They’re on the run. They have this little mobile home, they’ve made friends, Brasso (Joplin Sibtain) has a partner. It has these epic fields of golden rye, but again they’re displaced, it’s like there’s nowhere in the galaxy you can hide.”
Yavin Goes Rogue
The challenge for the Andor team was depicting Yavin 4’s transition from ragtag hideout to the full-fledged rebel base that we see in Rogue One. “There was no point in me trying to redesign Yavin, it is what it is,” Hull says. “It was about finding something that felt like everyone there has got something to do, and all the spaces are logical, and also trying to get to the Rogue One version.”
He adds: “When we first land on Yavin, it’s like there’s nothing there, just the temples. I really wanted to have an energy that said ‘we are building something’. What interested me was what is Yavin really about? Not everyone’s there because they’re flying an X Wing. You’ve got people who are escaping persecution. You’ve got people who’ve been displaced. You’ve got to rehouse them. You’ve got to get rations. You’ve got to build housing for them quickly.
“It’s also romantic. I think that’s certainly what Tony was going for with Cassian and Bix (Adria Arjona) before she leaves. There’s an element of them finding peace in the jungle. But it needed to also feel like people were surviving.”
Checking In To Lina Soh
As the Empire tries to save the life of key agitator and arch string-puller Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) so that he can face interrogation, he is taken to a pristine hospital on Coruscant. “That was tricky because we wanted to be very ambitious for the hospital, but because it was only in that one episode we had to be quite smart [with the budget],” Hull says.
The efforts of Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau) to find Luthen, an unconventional adoptive father to her, define the hospital episode, with explosive consequences. “When we were plotting that episode, it was all very much designed around how Kleya would get to Luthen,” Hull says.
“We wanted to do something very different to hospitals previously in Star Wars, which I felt had always been quite dark, menacing, spaces, and do something that felt more sterile. One of the things we discussed very early on in Season 1, was that we don’t want to make a dark show. We want to make a show where there’s lots of light and daylight.”