Tony Gilroy says he purposefully opened ‘Andor’ Season 1 in a brothel as a litmus test for Disney

Los Angeles:  Writer Tony Gilroy heavily pushed the boundaries of ‘Star Wars’ with his latest show ‘Andor’, stating that he deliberately opened the pilot episode of the first season in a brothel as a litmus test for Disney, reports Dynamite News correspondent.

“I worked on ‘Rogue One’ so I knew what the (permissible) levels of violence were, and actually the rules loosened up considerably,” he said. “Yeah, we can’t have skin, but I very consciously started the first scene in a brothel just to see what would happen and how far we could go,” he added.

“There’s sex. … It’s something that probably seemed at some point like it was going to be a big anxiety, and it really turned out to be a nothing-burger all the way through.” Wanting to show the worst of the Empire, he said “I wanted to say ‘F*** the Empire’,” reports Variety.

Gilroy previously told Variety that he “wrote a legal brief” to Disney when he was trying to get the studio to allow him to actually the words “f*** the empire” in the show, explaining: “I wrote a memo on it and said, ‘Here’s why I think it’s economically prudent, and here’s why I think it’s good.’”

Adding to Gilroy’s comments, the show’s director Benjamin Carron said “Disney wouldn’t let us use it. So we changed it to ‘fight the empire.’ I remember having a call with Tony Gilroy saying, ‘Are we gonna get away with this?’”

While the ‘Andor’ team couldn’t get Disney to let them say “f*** the empire,” in the first season, they were nonetheless able to discuss topics like genocide, moral greyness, and sexual assault in Season 2 (Gilroy said at ATX that being able to do so was “pretty flawless”).

One of the highlights of the second season was a controversial scene, which featured actress Adria Arjona’s character Binx openly calling out an attempted sexual assault by an Imperial officer, with Bix bluntly shouting at an officer: “He tried to rape me!”, upon shooting him in front of others.

“I remember reading that, and within the truth of that moment of the abuse of power, being really scared to go into that scene,” Arjona told Variety. “But there was also something — I’m going to curse — really f***** powerful about the fact that I get to showcase this in a galaxy far, far away. The fact that Tony gave it to Bix was a big honour — and it was right.

“She’s in the most vulnerable state she can possibly be in, and someone tries to take advantage of her. We’ve heard that story many times,” she added. The show, which is currently enjoying a rating of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and over 8.6/10 on IMDB, has been acclaimed by audiences and critics alike for its dark themes, mature and serious nature, its shift in tone, production, acting, writing, and storyline.

The show marked a stark shift in its focus and storytelling, featuring no grand battles, but instead portraying the nefarious and malicious thinking of the Empire, the growing tensions within the socio-political circles about Imperial hegemony, connecting the smallest dots to the larger machine showcased in the films.

A particular focus of the serial was also on the darker aspects of the rebellion, showing how the hopeful rebellion in its romantic freedom fight against tyranny had to also resort to many unsavoury tactics, partaking in bombings and assassinations to ignite the fires of the rebellion, while also shedding light on the fact that these people and their actions will never even be remembered nor appreciated, as freedom always comes with a price, sometimes it is paid not just in blood or with life, but the soul.