Tony Gilroy

How do you make the most celebrated STAR WARS story in decades without so much as a jedi in sight? You hire Tony Gilroy. The filmmaker behind MICHAEL CLAYTON and THE BOURNE LEGACY joins Josh to talk about his unlikely journey to ANDOR. Recorded at the 92nd Street Y. UPCOMING EVENTS 28 YEARS LATER Q&A with Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, & Danny Boyle 6/1 in NY -- ⁠⁠tickets here⁠⁠ Gary Oldman in LA 6/3 -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠tickets here⁠⁠⁠ Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes, video versions of the podcast, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:00Speaker 02

  All these beings, how many of these beings in the five years that I get, how many of them have ever heard of the Force? Well, like, nobody. How many have ever seen a lightsaber? Nobody. How many have heard of these four people you keep making the movies about? Nobody. So, I was like, okay, well, that's a pretty wide field. And that's the Star Wars reality. Right. You know, and so they... If you made a show about the United Kingdom and you only saw The Crown... Sure. You'd be like, whoa. I don't know. I don't know, that's enough, right?

• 1:37Speaker 03

  Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused, begins now.

• 1:44Josh Horowitz?

  Hey, guys, it's Josh, and welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. This one's for the Star Wars fans, or just generally fans of great television and storytelling. Tony Gilroy is my guest on the pod today. It's a fantastic chat, if I do say so myself. All credit to Tony. Before we get to Mr. Gilroy, some news and announcements, updates. We still have two really cool events coming up on the calendar I wanted to mention really quickly for New York fans and LA fans, one for each of you. In New York, 28 years later... One of my most anticipated of the year, we are gathering together Danny Boyle, Aaron Taylor Johnson, and Jodie Comer at the 92nd Street Y for a big chat. Evening of June 1st, we're gonna be showing clips from the film.

• 2:28Josh Horowitz?

  This is an early sneak peek at one of the most anticipated films of the year for anybody with good taste, frankly. How great is 28 years later and how excited are we all for this sequel? I'm stoked for this one. Then, Los Angeles, June 3rd. I've been touting it, I'm gonna continue to tout it until it happens. I'm sorry, but I'm never going to apologize for having an event with Gary Oldman and being excited about it. I'm excited. Gary Oldman, the living legend. We're talking slow horses, but we're really also gonna have a great career chat. True romance, Bram Stoker, Dracula, a thousand roles, Harry Potter, Batman. We're gonna cover as much territory as possible. He's one of the greats of all time, truly. June 3rd in Los Angeles at the Fine Arts Theater.

• 3:13Josh Horowitz?

  Information on how to get your tickets is in the show notes. Our tier one tickets are sold out, but there are still plenty of seats left. It is a relatively small theater. It's gonna be an intimate, fun, special evening with one of the all-time greats, Gary Oldman. So get your tickets now, spread the good word, come on out and say hello. As always, all the announcements, the early access, all the cool stuff is on our Patreon, patreon.com/happysadconfused. Supporting us over there lets us make more stuff over here, so check it out, see if something makes sense for you, and you have my eternal thanks. Okay, today's episode. Andor. Andor is one of the great shows I've seen in recent years, full stop.

• 3:58Josh Horowitz?

  Whether it's Star Wars or not, whether you love Jedi or Skywalker's or whatever, this is just a great show. And it's no surprise because it comes from Tony Gilroy, who is one of the most consistently smart writers and filmmakers out there. He is, of course, known for his work on the Bourne movies. Michael Clayton, this guy is a consummate storyteller and to see what he's brought to the Star Wars universe, first through Rogue One, which he helped kind of triage and help out, and now with his baby, Andor, which just concluded its second season. This is a conversation that we taped at 92nd Street Y just a day after the second season concluded.

• 4:43Josh Horowitz?

  There's some spoilery stuff that we allude to here and there. So best to have seen the entire second season prior to watching or listening to this chat. I would recommend consuming it that way. But um, this is one of those great chats with like a really smart storyteller. So if you're a writer, an actor, a filmmaker, or just a fan, I think you're gonna get a lot out of hearing Tony speak.

• 5:11Josh Horowitz?

  He's just whip smart and really unusual. His vibe, you'll see, very matter of fact, doesn't take it all too, I mean, takes it very seriously, doesn't maybe take himself too seriously. And just, uh, I really dug getting to know him, never had chatted with him before. So I think you guys are gonna dig this one, whether you're a Star Wars fan or not. Please enjoy my conversation with the great Tony Gilroy. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here tonight, guys. Uh, obviously not a lot of New York Knicks fans in the house tonight. Thank you for prioritizing Star Wars over the Knicks. Um, my name's Josh Horowitz. This is a live taping of my podcast, Happy, Sad, Confused, and I'm so thrilled. Sometimes the timing just lines up.

• 5:54Josh Horowitz?

  It's the right guy at the right moment. Just about a day ago, last night, the finale, the last three episodes of Andor premiered, and it is

• 6:07Josh Horowitz?

  I am not alone in saying it is some of the best television in recent years. It is some of the best drama. It is some of the best Star Wars full stop ever, ever made. I'm confident in saying that. And the architect behind it is of course Tony Gilroy. You know him from his Academy Award nominated work, Michael Clayton, his screenwriting work, Doris Claiborne, Devil's Advocate, the Bourne movies. This guy knows how to do it, and it is all evidence on screen in Andor. Let's celebrate him and the show tonight. Please give a warm welcome to Tony Gilroy, everybody.

• 6:43Josh Horowitz?

  There are people here. There are people here.

• 6:49Josh Horowitz?

  Oh my God.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  There are people here.

• 6:56Josh Horowitz?

  Of course they're here. You've made like the most celebrated show on television right now. Of course they're here, Tony.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 7:02Josh Horowitz?

  Okay. Don't act humble.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  I'm getting with that idea, yep.

• 7:07Josh Horowitz?

  Are you more excited today about the reception to Andor? Or the fact that the Knicks are one game away from advancing?

• 7:12Speaker 02

  My logic tonight is that no matter what, there's another Knick game.

• 7:16Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  You know, if I go home and they won, then like, wow, alright. So I'm good, I'm good no matter what. Let's go Andor all the way.

• 7:24Josh Horowitz?

  Alright. I'm gonna celebrate Andor tonight. And there's a lot to celebrate. Look, you've gotten some great reviews throughout your career. And this one, this is next level. The way this has really united both fans of Star Wars, who are tough, and the folks that aren't necessarily Star Wars fans are appreciating this show. You've somehow hit that kind of nexus. Was that part of the goal of Andor from the start?

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Well, we've been, we've been working really hard the last five, six weeks. We've been really junk hitting hard and like, everyone's got a red dress on and we're out doing the Willy Loman everywhere. Because the first audience we have, like the Star, if you're interested in Star Wars, you're probably really there already. Like, they were almost there before. The audience that we're really chasing is Star Wars averse. You know, the Star Wars resistant, the people who, who, my friends. You know, who I run into on the street who are like, oh wow, you know, Clayton was on. Or Borne was on, man, what have you been doing? Where you been?

• 8:35Josh Horowitz?

  You mean the last decade of my life?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, like six years, I've been like, you know. Oh no, but it's Star Wars. And so, that's the audience we're really chasing. I hope that's some people here, you know, that's really, we're really after it. The show was built by people who, the show was designed for that. It was designed, you didn't have to know anything about Star Wars at all to sit down and make a meal out of it. And it was built by people, half the people were nerds and the other half of the people were... Had to be convinced to come on the show for the same reason.

• 9:08Josh Horowitz?

  It is fascinating because like, I'm sure a lot of people here did grow up on Star Wars. It's in our DNA. And I think there's like this preconceived notion that like, what is Star Wars? And like for like, growing up, you're like, well, Star Wars is the Skywalker's. Skywalker, uh, Star Wars is the Force. And that's not this show, and yet it is Star Wars. I don't know, for you having come out the other side of this long journey, can you define what, what is Star Wars? What makes something fit under that umbrella?

• 9:34Speaker 02

  To fit, like, I don't want to repeat myself, but if you think about it, the easiest way to think about it is like the Vatican. Like, Lucasfilm is the Vatican. And there's like a curia, and there's people that, you know, and there are, I don't even, I don't know all the levels. There's eight, 10 levels of canonical material, all the way down to like obscure fan fiction or whatever. And there's, you know, and there's a guy. There's Pablo Hidalgo, who's the guy. He's been there, the librarian of this thing for, for a very long time. And one of the, and I knew him from Rogue. My experience on Rogue is very different than this. But, um, when the, you know, I called Pablo and I go, okay, like, fess up. The galaxy, all these beings. How many of these beings in the five years that I get?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  How many of them have ever heard of the Force? Well, like, nobody. How many have ever seen a lightsaber? Nobody. How many have heard of these four people you keep making the movies about? Nobody. So, I was like, okay, well, that's a pretty wide field. And that's the, that's the Star Wars reality.

• 10:35Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  You know, and so they...

• 10:40Speaker 02

  If you made a show about the United Kingdom and you only saw the crown?

• 10:46Josh Horowitz?

  Sure.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  You'd be like, whoa, I don't know. I don't know, that's enough, right?

• 10:52Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  So that's, it's, so that was, is a really wide playing field. It, it's not what people think, so.

• 10:58Josh Horowitz?

  It's fascinating too, because you've kind of like Trojan-horsed your revolutionary novel into Star Wars, essentially. Like, this, this, this story has the bells and whistles of, yes, aliens and, and, and Star Wars accoutrements. But underneath it all are other passions that have been important to you, needless to say, right? So, I mean, was there, was there a non-and/or, was there a non-Star Wars take on these themes and stories that you were thinking of tackling? Like, is there a non-Star Wars version of this story that you were going to tackle?

• 11:30Speaker 02

  I never, oh, that's an interesting question. I never, I never played with an idea that went at this stuff. You know, I, yeah, history and revolutions and Oliver Cromwell and the French Revolution and, you know, the show trials and I mean, I can go, you know, I'm an amateur historian. But I never, no, I never fantasized that I was gonna have an opportunity to work on that, but, but Trojan Horse is only, like, it makes Disney look like a dupe.

• 11:58Josh Horowitz?

  They knew what they were getting into.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  No, no, they came and said, hey, here's these five years and this is the show and they knew that my concept for the show, they tried the show different ways before. They tried to make it a, you know, Butch and Sundance, Cassian and the Robot, go and save the Tesseract or whatever, but, and they were smart. It was smart shit, but it was like, wow, what are you doing, like, you're gonna run out of story nutrients very quickly. So I kept saying, if I was gonna do it, or what you should do, because I wasn't trying to get the job, you should do, you should like, take the guy back to when he was a roach, the worst night of his life, and see if you can, in five years, if you can get him to be the guy in the other movie and that trip.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  And that five years is, of the calendar in Star Wars lore is just super potent. It's, uh, it's this epic rise of fascism and authoritarianism and takeover and it's a whole bunch of people oppressed, backed into a corner, having to react. It's, it's literally history coming and kicking down the door of all the people that are there. I'm like, okay, well, that's, that's, you want me to do like, in the end, fifteen hundred page, fifteen hundred pages on that? It's revolution, yeah, definitely do that. And, um, so it wasn't entirely duplicitous.

• 13:26Josh Horowitz?

  You've obviously worked with IP.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  That's why I did the job, though. That's why I did the show. To do that.

• 13:32Josh Horowitz?

  To do that, yes. Working with IP is not something new for you, obviously, but I mean, this is a bit of a... Well, I mean, you know, you're thinking of Robert Ludlum books that are beloved to a degree, I mean...

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Not when we started, though. They were out of print.

• 13:45Josh Horowitz?

  Dolores Claiborne?

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Dolores Claiborne, yes. You're right, you're right. No, you're absolutely right. IP, you're right, you're right, you're right.

• 13:50Josh Horowitz?

  So is there... Because I think I've heard you talk a little bit about like your secret weapon in a way, and you've kind of just referenced this on Rogue even, was you weren't deferential to the Star War... The Vatican, as it were. You kind of came at it as a writer first and Wes as a worshiper at the altar of all things Star Wars.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Yes, I have fed my family through disrespect of IP.

• 14:15Josh Horowitz?

  Your words, not mine, but...

• 14:18Josh Horowitz?

  But I am kind of...

• 14:20Speaker 02

  No, it's true.

• 14:21Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Dolores Claiborne, uh, super, like, Stephen King likes that movie. And like, that movie, if you read the book, it's extremely different, except the character that Kathy Bates plays, Dolores Claiborne, is identical to the book. She's like... It's so true to who she is. It's just everything else is different.

• 14:47Josh Horowitz?

  Got it.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  So it's like, really true in a way. Born, the books were out of print. Rogue, it was like, there's a corpse on the table, what are you gonna do, you know? Could someone revive the... You know, can you get life support? Can you... Could someone come in and save it? It doesn't help to be a fan at that point.

• 15:04Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  It helps to be a cardiothoracic, you know, whatever.

• 15:09Josh Horowitz?

  Clear? Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  No, like, battle, right? No, like, that... Like, it doesn't help you to be into it.

• 15:15Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, precious about it, yeah, yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Not being into it helps you do it.

• 15:18Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, I know you're not gonna say anything about this, but I'm just gonna do my duty to ask this question. Because I've asked Gareth about this, I've talked to Chris White, you all clam up when Rogue One comes up. Is there like a blood pact on like, we're never gonna talk about what happened on Rogue?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  I have fed my family by not talking about Rogue.

• 15:35Josh Horowitz?

  Okay, I just, for the record, I'm just curious.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  I got one more to go. One more.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  My wife is out there somewhere, I don't know.

• 15:43Josh Horowitz?

  All right, so you get in, Kathy gives you this extraordinary opportunity and you run with it.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:49Josh Horowitz?

  Season one is fantastic and you have this very ambitious plan. We're gonna do five years, five seasons.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Right. Well, that's what we said in the beginning.

• 15:57Josh Horowitz?

  Right. That was, that was said to everybody out loud and that was your intent. You kind of have a creative breakdown at some point.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not, like, I don't want to appear too slick or like together because I took this job ahead. I mean, you, you could not be, and I'm like, it's not like I have my eyes closed to the business or to other people that have done shows. I, the, uh, my blindness and naivete and ignorance about what I was getting into was stunning. Really stunning. And, uh, I thought I could direct the first three episodes and we had a writer's room for a week and they were getting the scripts in and it, absent COVID, there's no show. COVID like put the brakes on everything and reset everything and, uh, let me learn a way

• 16:48Speaker 02

  to run the show remotely in a way that really was incredibly effective for the system that we developed to make it. COVID saved the show, um, so I wasn't really prescient about what I was getting into at all. I was really stupid.

• 17:03Josh Horowitz?

  So.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  I really regretted it for, I was hoping COVID would take the show away.

• 17:09Josh Horowitz?

  So what's, what's the turn? When, when do you actually, you just hit upon this new story, story structure of when you're talking to Diego?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  They kept saying, okay, you don't have to direct. Okay, you can stay there. Oh, you know, I was like, I'm not going to England and die for the show. Cause that was COVID, it was deep COVID and UK was, I don't know who followed the UK COVID crazier than here in some ways. Um, and, uh, man, super aggressive. They wanted to go and, uh, an amazing producer is Anna Wallenberg who produced Chernobyl and she's been my sister all the way through this. She's literally the, the mother of the show in, in many ways. And, um, she, she's just.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Gonna go and Disney was the first up and we started, they started testing and there was kinda shamed into continuing, right? And I was rewriting everything. I rewrote my scripts first, they weren't good enough, I started rewriting everything else that came in. We started hiring directors and around, I don't know, late winter, I was able to get out of quarantine in London and go up to Scotland where we were shooting. By that point, the work that was required to make the show, at its minimum, was just, you know, bedazzlingly blinding to look at. It's really epic amount of work and a number of people and money and just time.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  And Diego, who's, Diego Luna, who's been my partner on this all the way through, we were in a, you know, we went to a backyard in a little hotel in Scotland and it was like, oh my god, we told them we would do five years, that's 60 episodes. Nobody, you literally physically could, if we're gonna do it like this, you couldn't physically do it, he, his face will be like, I mean, de-aging you can do a lot, but you can't do, I mean, and we just, it was impossible. What are we gonna do? And we came up with a plan to do the second season, to do the four years of the second season in one season. And that led to a whole series of interesting decisions that were, ended up, it wasn't being so smart, it was being lucky.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  It was like this shit just presented itself in front of you, like, oh my god, we have four blocks and there's four years and what happened if you came back for three days? And that couldn't work, but it does. And it really, it was a very fortuitous, experimental, exciting, storytelling, dramatist thing.

• 19:40Josh Horowitz?

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• 22:59Josh Horowitz?

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• 23:08Josh Horowitz?

  I've alluded to this already, like the fact that it's such a sprawling work that, ironically, despite the fact that it's called Andor, this is like a gigantic ensemble. There are so many speaking parts, so many significant-

• 23:18Speaker 02

  400 speaking parts in two seasons.

• 23:21Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, it doesn't get bigger than that.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  No, it's stupid.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  It's stupid.

• 23:27Josh Horowitz?

  That's a thin line between genius and stupidity, though.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, no, it's...

• 23:31Josh Horowitz?

  But, look, there are episodes where Cassian is barely in it, or not in it at all. And talk to me a little bit about fleshing out this ginormous ensemble and filling in all the blanks and making it something that's, I don't know, that makes us fall in love with everyone from Claire to Luthen to Dick. I mean, it's crazy.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  I've been overpopulating scripts for a while. And, um... And, uh... I've been accused of that before, that you always turn a script in and they go to budget and they go, "Wow, we... Do you realize how many..." Yeah. So I'm the day player's friend, and I really, I like to tell stories. I don't know, I really use it that way, and I don't know. Anyway, but, um, this was an extreme case of that.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  But, uh, I guess in the same way that I said that the the version that Disney was originally thinking about doing, which was, you know-

• 24:28Josh Horowitz?

  The two-hander or something.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, the two-hander, Saving the Tesseract, was so limited. It was just seemed so claustrophobic. I think I'm so-

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Through experience, you know, so nervous about not having something super exciting to turn the page to, I was like, oh, you know what, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna populate this thing and, and, and there's always gonna be someplace interesting to go and all these people are gonna inform each other about each other and the heart, and I've learned over the last millennium of doing this, that I've learned how to get people in the same room together, um, you know, the hard, it's hard work that and like people watch Bourne movies, what's, oh, the hardest thing in the Bourne movies, you know, a speech or a, you know, some bravura thing, it's not, it's really, it's like orchestrating

• 25:17Speaker 02

  literally so people can talk to each other, you know, and I, so I'm like, I can get every, if I can get all these different people and get them together, and then Nina, Nina Gold, who you've seen millions of, I mean, she did Game of Thrones, she did, I mean, what, she's done every major show, casting agent in London, she's just a wonderful person and Martin Ware, who's her partner, and I, and I was, you know, she was gifted to us and she really dug what we were doing and we started and, um.

• 25:49Josh Horowitz?

  Can you, can you speak to a little bit of the casting actually, because there are some amazing casting discoveries, like I do, I, you know, I watch a lot and, and yes, there are some very recognizable faces in here, some faces that you, some actors you've inherited from, et cetera.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Right, a couple, yeah, mostly, yeah.

• 26:04Josh Horowitz?

  But I'm saying is mostly, yes, they are new and they're, they're not giant name actors, was that a conscious decision?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Well, there's, there's just so many great actors over there, and another American showrunner, name, remain nameless, said to me on the way over, he goes, man, you're gonna be a pig in shit, he goes, you're gonna go to Nina and like, you're gonna see these actors, he goes, and all these Brits won't hire them because they were on EastEnders for eight years or they're the Cadbury spokesperson or they, you know, or they, or Coronation Street and they're like, they're so snobby and awful over there, he goes, these people are gonna come in, you're gonna see them, they're really great actors, they're fantastic people, you're gonna have no fil, you're not gonna have any bias and you're gonna, and that's, that's our show and I think a lot of people have been shown up in the UK by the people that we cast and like said, hey, maybe you should, I mean, a lot.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  And it was a pleasure for Nina, I think, who had a lot of people in her back pocket. And a lot of people you see on Thrones or Slow Horses, you'll see a lot of same. The shows are all cross-pollinating now, but, um, man, they have a deep talent pool over there.

• 27:10Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, some of the amazing acting talent here, Stellan Skarsgård, we know, but, um, the actor you found for Klae, I mean, this relationship, which we didn't really, I mean,

• 27:20Josh Horowitz?

  if you've seen the entire series, you know how resonant this relationship is and how important this character turns out to be to the Star Wars story.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Last night, her shit dropped, yeah.

• 27:28Josh Horowitz?

  The backstory.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Like, anybody who watched, anybody who's into that, you're on the ground floor of an actor investment, you know, you see an actor early. I would really, if I was buying stock, I would buy Elizabeth Dullow.

• 27:44Josh Horowitz?

  So that relationship and that unexpected kind of origin story, for lack of a better term, that we see in the flashback.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  From last night, yeah.

• 27:50Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah. Was that seeded right from the beginning? Like, tell me how that evolved, how, who they are to each other in your mind.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Uh, when Stellan came on the show in the very beginning, when we were gonna do five, I guess, at some point, he was like, uh, I will, they want me to make this, you know, these contracts are so prohibitive. And he says, "You gotta promise to kill, I'll come on, but you gotta promise to kill me in two years."

• 28:11Speaker 02

  So I'm like, "Well, yeah, all right, like, give me two years, and if you wanna stick around, I'll do it, if not, I'll, I have the pen." And, um, and then, and then it was like, and we tried to come up with some, he's not really a backstory guy, he's not a real, he's not a needy kind of actor, but I, like, came up with some elaborate backstory or a couple different versions, and he was like, "Ah." And we both agreed that they sank under their own weight and they weren't, weren't worth it. And he goes, "Look," he goes, "Let's table this, and, uh, I just, I don't want my backstory to be revenge. And as long as it's not revenge, I'm into it." And then, we shot the first, as we're shooting the first season, there's a scene that we shot probably about halfway through our shooting, when, uh, Faye Marseille-Vell shows up at the gallery and she's... She's flushed from running this heist and she's not supposed to be there.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  And she confronts, and these two women do not like each other. There's territorial battle over who's really dominant with him. And Faye Marseille says to him, you know, I gave him Aldani. What have you done for him lately? And she says, I don't do lately, I do always. And like this, like, we're like, oh, look at her. And like the way, and we like, she just rose all the way through. So then you get to the second season, you're like, okay, well, we have to explain their backstory. And then the decision train becomes inevitable and where it falls becomes inevitable. Yeah.

• 29:26Josh Horowitz?

  Dedra and Cyril, greatest love story of all time.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Wow, greatest love story of all time. I don't know, man.

• 29:34Josh Horowitz?

  That says more about me than you.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Turn out the lights.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  It's like, wow, man.

• 29:44Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, that's another case where, again, actors I wasn't familiar with. They have such interesting, unusual vibes with each other, solo. Talk to me how that relationship evolved, by seeing what they did.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Cyril was an early, like I had that, I use navigational scenes. Like I write a scene, I plot through a lot of dialogue. So I sketch scenes and sometimes I don't even know where they're gonna go. The scene where he, his first scene where he is, is where he, he's called in by his superior. He's investigated this double murder and he's changed his uniform. And his manager is just this amazing, another British actor, who just is like, could not be more exhausted with this, you know, ferret of an employee. And so he was my javert, you know? I'm like, oh, there's a guy who's gonna be obsessed with my hero all the way through. So he stood up right away. And I can't remember exactly where she came from, but she rose early.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  And as they, as I plotted them together, and Kyle came in and auditioned, and literally when I, pre-COVID, literally in the audition, I'm like, okay. I said to Nina, like, okay, let's have that, that's the guy. And Denise, my wife and I had gone to see People, Places, Things in London early, the show that she did that won the Olivier. We saw it on Row really early, 10 years ago. And we're like, we went to dinner afterwards and we're like, oh my God, that woman has to do that eight other times this week. It was just crazy how amazing she was. So when Nina brought her in, I didn't even really have to, I don't think she read. I was like, okay, she's a freak.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  And...

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:27Josh Horowitz?

  And in concert with the two of them.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  She was really...

• 31:34Speaker 02

  edgy during the season about not having a romance.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  I do not want my character to be submerged into a romance. What happens is I get a romance and then the whole thing will be a love story. And I'm like, I don't think, I don't know. Well, we'll see. Okay.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Now they're really into it. Oh my god. You see them on the ju... They're like, they're together in a... They're two very unusual people as well.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  They're very amusing.

• 32:04Josh Horowitz?

  Late in the season, she describes her character, she says, "I'm a scavenger." Maybe it's just because I saw Michael Clayton like the night before, but I think of, "I'm a janitor." Is there a connection? They're self-identifying what they... their function in the universe?

• 32:18Speaker 02

  No, that's just me becoming a more declarative writer.

• 32:23Josh Horowitz?

  Fair enough. Fair enough.

• 32:28Josh Horowitz?

  The gift of inheriting an actor, Manmathma John Veeb, is amazing in this.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Genevieve, yeah.

• 32:36Josh Horowitz?

  Genevieve, sorry.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Genevieve O'Reilly.

• 32:38Josh Horowitz?

  Genevieve O'Reilly.

• 32:43Josh Horowitz?

  Again, that's someone you inherit. You don't even know.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  I have no choice in that. No. I worked with her maybe one day on Rogue. So I met her once and you have to have her. So it's like, alright, well, I don't know, you know, okay.

• 32:54Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, there's so much... A lot has been made about her speech to the Senate, which is just remarkable. Again, are you writing to the strengths of your actor by then?

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know who she is when we start. And Zana says, you know, "She's a lot better than people think." And, "What could we do with her?" And, you know, you're kind of road testing. People and you're, I'm having lots of conversations, even, you know, even in both iterations of pre-COVID, post-COVID, whatever. I'm very curious about what she can do. How far can you go with her? And, uh, oh my God, you're like, you know, you're like plunking on the keys and you're like, you know, and you peel the tape off, it's, oh my God, it's a friggin Steinway, you know? I mean, she's like, holy cow. And she's been this unutilized actor. Again, so many people in this show have been underutilized for so long in the UK.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Shitty cop shows and, you know, and, and like, oh, gotta go do a series in, you know, Canada to pay my rent and whatever. And like, she was just, wow. And then, you know, it's really, it's really beautiful. The, the, you start to write for the person and they keep elevating. And as they elevate, then you realize you could do more. And like, I, I would contend that her performance in the show is the most elaborate and complicated and, and the most, and her character has the most tortured experience in the show because everything that she does is observed. Right. Everybody else can go out and, she has a cousin in the show who Faye Marseille plays and her cousin is sort of like a rich girl who joined the batter mine hoff or something like that.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  And like, her sister's off like shooting guns and active, but they do, they do connect. And, and Genevieve said to me one day, she goes, I'm so jealous of Faye. She goes out and gets to do, jump off dams and stuff. I go, that's exactly what's happening for her, man. You're, she's trapped, everybody's watching what she's doing. And, um, Genevieve, I don't know if she learned on the show or she came or, but there are so many places in the show, I don't know if we have a, I don't know what clips we're showing, but like where she, this mask will, will come, this, you'll watch her just.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Arm up without doing anything and the escalation of that and the importance of it as the show goes on becomes, she's just, man, I, I, I think, I, I think her performance is central, you know, as central as Diego's to the show.

• 35:25Josh Horowitz?

  The, you, we talked about how the early ideas from Kathy's group was about this kind of two-hander. You do bring in K2, obviously, as the show progresses towards the end.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:35Josh Horowitz?

  And it's such a perverse, amazing origin story. It's, it's pretty remarkable. Was that something, I know there was an alternate idea that you had.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  There was a whole bunch of, yeah, and you talk about canon. I mean, canon doesn't, I usually try to deal with it and, and, and I'm really sympathetic and into it. I was annoyed to find out that somebody had, in, in the interim between Rogue and that, had written an origin story for K2. And it's like, no, I'm not paying attention to that. We're not doing that. But, um, what was my point that was so?

• 36:10Josh Horowitz?

  How did you, how did you round on the origins of K2 and?

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, is it, we, uh, my brother got burned. My brother was one of the writers on the show, Bo Willamon, and Dan Gilroy and Tom Bissell came in to help me out and do episodes on the show and, and sort of do the collaboration on, on a lot of the building. And, uh, there was an episode, there was a whole self-contained episode about the, about the, about K2 and that. And Danny wrote this elaborate horror movie episode that we had to scrap for money. But, um, I can't remember, uh, I, I, I wanted to stall the K2 thing as long as possible after, and, and I really knew it would be great if we waited. I think Alan Tudyk got impatient, you know, it was hard to wait and everybody got impatient waiting.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  But my experience on Rogue was that he was a very difficult character to take around to do plot with. He's very hard. You couldn't do anything with him. You can't go anywhere. You can't hide or anything. But when he comes, you want him to be strong. So we did it that way.

• 37:11Josh Horowitz?

  Is it, is it, it must be an important decision to make when you do, in this show, reference the Force. You do have a want, you do have the May of Force to be with you towards the end of the show.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  At the very end, he says that, yeah.

• 37:24Josh Horowitz?

  Right. So is that, is that, is that like a?

• 37:26Speaker 02

  But I have Force in the show. I put a Force healer in.

• 37:29Josh Horowitz?

  Yes. So talk to me a little bit about the?

• 37:31Speaker 02

  It wasn't in my original plan.

• 37:33Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  But I felt like if I could get it in, it would be abusive to not have it, to not touch on it if I could. Like to the real people who really care, like, you know, if I could get it in, I would. We... There's an early scene in the first two episodes where Cassian has to... He's stealing a test ship and he's supposed to deliver it to another pilot and he lands on this planet and there's these idiot rebels there that are in a mutiny that's kind of like to show you in a microcosm what's gonna happen later on, the funny crappy version. And at the end of that too, when he escapes, when he pulls away, you realize, oh my god, he was in Yavin, which is, you know, epic Star Wars where it's the base, the rebel base.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  And it's the beginning of the rebel base. It was like, wow. So he's kind of a little zelig. You know, he's kind of at all these places when all these epic things. He's at Aldani and he's here and he survives this and that and the other thing. There is some element of destiny that I shouldn't ignore. And reluctant destiny is really cool. I mean, there's a really major religion that's based on it.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  And Diego's really good at looking like Star Wars Jesus.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  And like, it's like, and like... But how to do it so it's not cheesy and how to do it so you're not... Mission accomplished, not cheesy. Yeah, no, and like, and so...

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Tiptoe'd into a place, you know, that character of... What's the hook on that scene? If you watch that scene, what lets me in? What lets me in is when she says thank you to him. She senses him across the place and she's kind of a faker in a way. And she's... People come to be healed, but she doesn't really feel it anymore. She can't do anything. And here's this guy across the thing who doesn't want to even talk to her and she like, she can feel something across the thing and she doesn't even know what it is. And then she does this thing and she's like, thank you, you like restored this feeling. So it's really kind of, it's so bleak and it freaks him out and it confirms something for Adria, for Bix. So that was sophisticated and subtle enough to meet my thresholds of not being cheesy.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Right. And then it works, then it's like, then it, then it has value.

• 39:59Josh Horowitz?

  Is there, look, I mean, this, this show as a whole, this, this large ensemble, these are the forgotten for, the forgotten heroes of the revolution.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Forgotten people, yeah, the gravel, we say the gravel that the road to the revolution is built on, yeah.

• 40:11Josh Horowitz?

  So, you can kill them off or not kill them off, you have license, you can leave them, and you do, you leave many alive. So was there, did any make it that weren't intended to make it, or vice versa, that you went back and forth on, on who's gonna make it to the end?

• 40:26Speaker 02

  I, I, boy, no, not really. What real, I, I tell you how people run different shows, and boy, greatest show ever, Sopranos, right? And, um, I mean, seriously, uh, no complaints about Sopranos, but I was, did you watch the documentary about Sopranos?

• 40:42Josh Horowitz?

  I haven't watched it yet.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  It's really cool, it gets weird, and like, like, actors would show up for table reads to find out if they lived or died.

• 40:51Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Which is like, that's the antithetical, like, I talk to people six months beforehand, I'm like, you know, like, get ready, and make your car payments, cause you're out, you know, it's like, no, but I like, oh my god, no, so we, I had a pretty, I, I wanna, I was pretty, it's an open communicative process, and I, you don't wanna, you don't wanna kill people gratuitously or anything, I don't, it, it, it had, it had a, it had a rationale to it.

• 41:19Josh Horowitz?

  How much of the ending, we obviously knew this was gonna lead directly into Rogue One, so you had part of, you had some shots, some ideas about how this was gonna end, but you do end, and I apologize if some haven't watched the entire thing, so I'm gonna try not to give specifics. Well, it ends with a series of, there are five women that you kind of,

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:38Josh Horowitz?

  Talk about their fates at the end, was that something that was, how did that, how did you arrive at, how to kind of sum up?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  I think of all the things in the show, If my brother Johnny and I, who's the, it's not just the editor, he's the post, he's the, he's the, the master builder of posts. I think if you showed Johnny and I that last montage, that last sequence, like, three or four years ago while we were doing season one, we would've go, "Yeah, that's where we're gonna end up." Like, nothing else of season two, we probably could've shown us all kinds of things and we'd've been, "Really? Wow, you're gonna do that?" But like, the last thing, that, we, we knew where we were. And I think, Diego started saying this first, a while ago, and I think it's really true.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  I think the ability to make the show, the reason that it exists is all because we knew what the ending was. And we, and we really, there's relief in that, there's objective in that, there's, you can marshal your energy, 'cause you know how far you have to go to get there, and you know, you can sprint at the end if you have to. There's so many things that that does that help you. And you see so many shows where people start with something really great, a great idea, really cool, really hip, and like, they get going and they get traction, and they're like, "Whoa, what do we do?" And like, sometimes it really works out, and they really figure it out. But it's tough to make it, you know?

• 43:09Speaker 02

  You're, you're, you're swimming, you're out at sea. We were never at sea. We always knew where we were going, so you couldn't get too far lost.

• 43:18Josh Horowitz?

  Putting my, my Star Wars fanboy hat on for a second. You do reference Tarkin and Palpatine in the show.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  Talk about 'em, yeah.

• 43:24Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, ever a discussion of actually showing either of them?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Well, I was part of the Tarkin project on Rogue, so no. Uh, no. And Palpatine, you know, what are you gonna do? Show somebody in one as a, what's he gonna, like, what's he gonna say and come back? And what's he gonna do? And no, no.

• 43:45Josh Horowitz?

  Right. You have sadly said this, your time with Star Wars is done. That was for now.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, ten years, wow, give me a break.

• 43:53Josh Horowitz?

  We're greedy. You made some of the best Star Wars ever. And you found, it's a sandbox where you were able to pull, pour all of your ideas into. Why not do more? You could pour more ideas into it.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  I don't know, I mean, uh...

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Don't ever say never. But, you know, 24 hours and 2 hours of Rogue, that's 26 hours. That's...

• 44:19Josh Horowitz?

  That's a lot.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  I'm leaving the campsite cleaner than I found it, I think.

• 44:25Josh Horowitz?

  If you were teaching, yes.

• 44:30Josh Horowitz?

  For the next showrunner, writer, whatever, of a Star Wars project, you're teaching the Star Wars Writing for Dummies course. What's lesson one? What do you say?

• 44:40Speaker 02

  I don't think people should... I'm not into people... I don't... I hate being a benchmark or like an example. I like the... I've watched a couple of episodes of The Skeleton Crew. I actually think it's like, if I had a kid, I would watch that show with my kid. It's kind of like... I think they should just do... I don't know, man, I don't...

• 45:02Speaker 02

  I don't... Don't try to do this.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Don't do this at home, right?

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• 46:19Josh Horowitz?

  Can I ask you just a couple of questions about your background? Because your resume is so storied and there's so many amazing successes that I would be remiss if I didn't mention a couple of them. You were, your dad was a noted playwright, a very successful writer, yet you were a late bloomer when it came to writing. You were a reluctant writer, is that fair to say?

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I came late, yeah. I didn't, I mean, I never cashed a check until I was, I don't know, 35? 32? 32? Yeah, something. I was in my 30s when the first time I quit tending. Cannon Films? 30. At 30, I stopped tending bar, I have a child, and I get my first check from Cannon Films.

• 46:57Josh Horowitz?

  Cannon Films, no less.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Manaham Goleman.

• 47:00Josh Horowitz?

  Yes, there's a good documentary on that stuff.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  That's how old I am.

• 47:03Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, amazing, amazing. Were you, were you on set for the early gigs that you, as a writer? Were you on set for Cutting Edge, or Dolores, or any of those?

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Well, really different. And really, one of the reasons that I probably, that things worked out for me is that, Cutting Edge, I had the traditional writer's experience where I went up to Toronto on my first movie, and very exciting, I go for the, because the director was all into having table reads and rehearsals and all the monkey business that goes with like pretending that you're like doing something, you know, all that stuff. And I walked in the office and I was like, "Oh my God, here's this production office, all these people work here." And they, the line producer was a really old school line producer, and they brought me into him and he said, oh, he goes, well, he goes, "Welcome." He goes, "I'm gonna try to get rid of you as soon as I can." I go, "What?" He goes, "I hate having the writer on the set." That was my introduction. And, literally.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  And I was like, "Okay." And then when I, later on, Taylor Hackford, who made Dolores Claiborne, was the absolute opposite of that in every way. And Taylor just put his arms around me and from the very first moment of pre-production all the way through the final publicity campaign of three movies, Dolores Claiborne...

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Dolores Claiborne and

• 48:24Josh Horowitz?

  Devil's Advocate.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  And Devil's Advocate and Proof of Life.

• 48:28Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  I mean, for ten years of my life, I had access to everything. Every actor, I got, I mean, sometimes more than I wanted. I won't go into that, but like.

• 48:41Josh Horowitz?

  Well, I was gonna ask you about Devil's Advocate, because there are some amazing speeches in there that Pacino delivers. The absentee landlord speech, I mean, are you responsible for that and did you work with?

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, I mean, that's, oh my god, yeah, no, Taylor.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Taylor threw me with Al for, yeah, I spent a lot of time with Al on that.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  There's a lot more speeches that aren't even in the movie, yeah. That was an extravaganza.

• 49:07Josh Horowitz?

  We could probably spend at least two hours talking Bourne movies.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  We will not do that.

• 49:12Josh Horowitz?

  But.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  But, yeah, speeches.

• 49:15Josh Horowitz?

  Speeches.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Big monologues.

• 49:17Josh Horowitz?

  Big monologues. I was gonna say, the Bourne movies, though, in and of itself, you could spend, we could do a masterclass on how to, I mean, those are chaotic movies, how they're made, Doug Liman, a beautiful, chaotic filmmaker, Greengrasses, handheld, Verite style, and everything about, if you read about the production, there's a lot of stories around that. Is it, I don't know, is it a miracle to you that those films came out as well as they did?

• 49:41Speaker 02

  I'm gonna say what I always say, it is the most shambolic, fucked up success ever. It just kept rolling, and everybody didn't like each other and different things, it was just a mess, and it just kept working out.

• 49:55Josh Horowitz?

  And you just went along?

• 49:56Speaker 02

  I went along as far as I could, and then I tried, then I tried, seriously, I tried in Legacy to give them a Marvel Universe, I really did. I think, you know, it's a much maligned movie, and, because Matt Damon's not in it, but he was never supposed to be in it, but, like, that movie was, if you, if you think about it from the point of view I'm saying, I was really trying to give them a Marvel Universe, access to all areas, and blood was so bad that even that didn't.

• 50:21Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, I've talked to Renner about this, he was, he was amped.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm good, I'm good, Jeremy and I are good.

• 50:27Josh Horowitz?

  But he wanted, he wanted to mix it up with Matt on the crossover film. That was, that was the plan.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Oh my god, no, no, I don't want to get into that. All you have to know is that some things can succeed in spite of themselves. And it's also because Matt Damon is just like the greatest actor ever, right? Let's, I will say that. And the basic, right, isn't he? And he really is, man, he's amazing. And the basic, the story of someone who's continually throwing a gun away to try to, you know, who's an assassin is really compelling. Another reluctant, another reluctant savior.

• 50:58Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah. I'm sure, I, I hope you're okay talking about Michael Clayton. You should be, because it is a great film that has stood the test of time. And, I mean, as celebrated as it was, and it was celebrated, you were nominated twice for writing and directing. It has, its stature only grows. It has become...

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Last couple of years, it has some traction. Yeah, I don't know why, but yeah, the last couple of years, there was a whole...

• 51:21Josh Horowitz?

  Did you feel like you were in conversation with the Lumet films, with The Verdict? Was that on your mind when you were constructing that? Because it feels like it's a lost film from that era.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  I just went, I went to TCM and introduced some movies, and the one movie I had to do was Clute, you know, Clute, we showed Clute. You know, Clute was like our, that's our look, and... Yeah, no, I, we were, it was made by people who were obsessed with 70's, uh, Pacula movies, yeah.

• 51:47Josh Horowitz?

  Denzel has said it's the one movie he regrets turning down, Denzel Washington.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  I know.

• 51:52Josh Horowitz?

  Have you ever?

• 51:55Speaker 02

  No, I've read that, no.

• 51:57Josh Horowitz?

  You've never...

• 51:57Speaker 02

  He did a movie with my brother where he plays a lawyer a few years later, though, didn't he?

• 52:00Josh Horowitz?

  He did.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  From M.J. Israel.

• 52:02Josh Horowitz?

  That's right.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Like, does he do this? Because he like, no, but, no, he did. No, he's, I mean, no. He didn't want to work with a first-time director.

• 52:08Josh Horowitz?

  Right. Well, you got the right actor at the right time.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  He didn't want to work with, George, George turned me down, before I went to Denzel, George turned me down two years earlier, because he didn't want to work with a first-time director.

• 52:19Josh Horowitz?

  Crazy, okay. So, oh, is that your voice in the, in the cab at the end, by the way? The amazing...

• 52:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:25Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, I can't say.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Where are we going? What are we doing?

• 52:28Josh Horowitz?

  You guys remember the end of Michael Clayton? That long credit sequence where he's just in the cab? Amazing, amazing.

• 52:35Josh Horowitz?

  All right, let's talk about some audience questions. Let's do this. We want to know, was there ever a version of the story where Cassian finds his sister?

• 52:46Speaker 02

  A lot of people ask that question and I think that probably I thought about it in the beginning for a minute, hot minute, but it became very clear to me that the absence of his sister was far more valuable than her presence. There's a line where, he goes to the whole movie, you know, trying to, you know, he leaves his mother and he doesn't come back in time and like not getting there in time and not helping people. And at the very end, there's a really cool line, very well delivered by Faye Marsden, who plays Val, and Mon Motha comes to her at the very end and goes, "God, I've come to ask you if he's telling the truth and he went and saved Klae against orders and he got in all this trouble." And she says, she goes, "You know, he should just stop saving people." She's being ironic.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  And like, that's worth more to me than a coincidental cheesy scene where he happens to run into his sister or something. So she became more valuable. And everybody has things that are unresolved is good.

• 53:42Josh Horowitz?

  Somehow he's become, and he's already a tragic figure in Star Wars canon, you've somehow made him that much more tragic, given the ending of this.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Diego never wanted to, Diego never came and said, "Hey, can I have, where's my sister?" No. No, but I mean, like, he never asked for it.

• 53:59Josh Horowitz?

  I've heard, you've said that, do you have a special fondness for Cyril of all the characters? Do you have some kind of connections, some kind of empathy for?

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Above everyone else?

• 54:08Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Well, maybe. In a way, I've been unleashed in the last two weeks to use the word fascism.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  I had media training before that.

• 54:29Josh Horowitz?

  We're getting the good version of Tony.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  I can use that word. And...

• 54:40Speaker 02

  You know, what, all right, I'll go for it. What does fascism do? It doesn't just, it doesn't just destroy the people it comes for first and the communities and the organizations and the law and the truth and the rest of it. Inevitably, in every model of fascism that there's been, it ultimately comes and destroys its early proponents and its foot soldiers and its underclass and it destroys its, because it's all centralized power. It eventually eats its young. And I'm not consciously starting off saying, oh, I want to write a show where it does that. Right. I'm not doing that. But the result is, I mean, Dedra's a true believer.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  She grew up in an imperial kinder block. She's a zealot. Whatever chaos is inside her is very contained. But Cyril is a romantic character, maybe the most romantic character in the show. And there's a scene early on in the first season, if you ever watch it, where he's in, back in his mother's, that apartment, that box he lives in with her. And he's in his childhood room and he's at his window in the morning, sitting on the side of his bed. And, you know, there's a thing where like this one, 30 seconds of sunlight comes through his room and he's waiting for that, like he's waited his whole life. On his desk are his little action figures and like, that guy could go, his fantasies could be anything.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  And he buys into this fascist, imperial mindset and constructs everything. This whole, the whole cathedral he builds inside himself is all about that and Dedra and everything else. And then that, and when that comes crashing down, that's, that's really sad to me. And I, I think, I mean, I don't know, I don't want to say that pick him to identify more than anybody else, but I'm, maybe you get some idea of how.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Like, if you're writing well, you're, you feel that way about all of them, right?

• 56:46Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  And you could, I could make that speech about a lot of people on the show. I think, I hope.

• 56:52Josh Horowitz?

  You're not, I've heard you talk about this, I mean, a lot of folks wanna kind of, you know, draw parallels between the world we live in now and this show. You're not the type of writer to look at the news and then say, "How do I pour that into these characters?"

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Not tonight.

• 57:11Josh Horowitz?

  But these story, the...

• 57:14Josh Horowitz?

  Still a little media...

• 57:14Speaker 02

  That guy.

• 57:15Josh Horowitz?

  Still a little media training left.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Get him out of here.

• 57:20Josh Horowitz?

  But these stories are cyclical, these, these, these...

• 57:22Speaker 02

  It's sad, but true, yes.

• 57:26Josh Horowitz?

  You are not returning to Star Wars, but you are working on a film. You have a script that you wanna make.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  I, yeah, yeah, very happily, I, over the summer, I wrote a movie. So I don't have like, the burden of like, "Oh, I'm done, what am I gonna do?" No, I wrote a movie over the summer, so I got the monkey off my back. I don't have to worry that I'm frozen.

• 57:42Josh Horowitz?

  And this is, without saying too much, movie, music, world, Oscar Isaac is attached?

• 57:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, yeah, no, it's about movie music. Yeah, it's about, it's about, uh, it's about a cellist who comes back to LA, is part of a session family, and after 20 years, returns to LA to cut sessions for movies again.

• 57:57Josh Horowitz?

  And Oscar is potentially your guy?

• 57:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, Oscar's been standing by me as we try to get money for the last six months. We've been struggling.

• 58:04Josh Horowitz?

  He was almost your Aaron Cross, as I recall. He ended up in the film, but not, he auditions, right?

• 58:09Speaker 02

  He, he came in and gave an audition for us when he was nobody. He was, he was, yeah, he was absolutely nobody. And he came in and gave an audition for the legacy part that was, um, you know, Frank Marshall and Kathy Kennedy and I sat in my hotel room in LA and watched like, 40 times at night, trying to figure out how we would convince Universal to do something. No, I mean, but it didn't, it couldn't work out. He didn't have any, he was nobody. But he, he's, boy, he's a great actor, isn't he?

• 58:41Josh Horowitz?

  You, you tried to sell them on it, but he was just, he didn't have the stature. There was at least a conversation.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  We made, uh, we made, yeah, we, we, yeah, you couldn't really go, you couldn't make demands and stuff, cuz it was a pretty obscure ask. He really was nobody, he was just out of Juilliard, he was, he was a, but wow, what a, what a, I mean, talk, how auditions shake you up, you know? And that happens, you know?

• 59:04Speaker 02

  People shake you up at an audition. Wow.

• 59:07Josh Horowitz?

  Best unproduced script in your drawer that you've never had a chance to make? Is there one that's?

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Couple. I mean, I think the best stuff I ever wrote is in there. Really, honest to God. Yeah, no, I think the best scripts have not been made. I think that's true for most writers, yeah.

• 59:20Josh Horowitz?

  And that's just because it's not the right genre at the right time? A thousand reasons.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  As lucky as I am tonight,

• 59:28Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  I had some bad luck.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  I mean, seriously, man, I mean, a lot of bad, I mean, no care, I mean, really, that's what it is. It's bad luck. You kind of picture there's like an Aztec stone wheel in Hollywood of availability and moment. No, I mean, like, and when the, you know, some calendar and like, think of all the great movies that didn't happen because the right person wasn't available for the part at the right moment, or the movies that did happen because the person was right. And it's, you see something that you love with the right person and the thing comes together. It's a miracle, kind of. And but you can't, you know, but a lot of times you have your hand slammed in the door, you know, it's just, I mean, it's,

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  it's a grinder's job. You gotta grind for a long time to, to sit here tonight. You gotta grind.

• 1:00:15Josh Horowitz?

  So you're gonna watch Star Wars as a, as a fan going forward. What do you hope and expect to see?

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  Nah, I, I mean,

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  they have some kinky projects that they're trying and I, no, like,

• 1:00:31Josh Horowitz?

  Really?

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, like 25,000 years B.C.

• 1:00:34Josh Horowitz?

  Right, the Mankle.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Star Wars and a horror movie and some other stuff and like, yeah, no, yeah.

• 1:00:40Josh Horowitz?

  Are you, are you secret trusted advisor? Are you gonna weigh in when Kathy calls over a little?

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  I do that for everybody. I do that for a lot of, I mean, that's, I mean, I have a community of, you know, I have a,

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  you know, an elder screenwriter community of people that I ask for advice, that ask me for, yeah, people will call you. I mean, there's people I'll read for and people that I'll ask to read for me. Yeah, I think that's a community service that people give each other.

• 1:01:05Josh Horowitz?

  William Goldman was-

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Which is how I got in this job.

• 1:01:07Josh Horowitz?

  I was gonna say Goldman was kind of a family friend.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Oh my God, he's the ultimate, well, he was, he was the one who taught us how to do all this. He was the guy who basically, you know, Spread it around. He was the great. At his funeral, Scott Frank and I did the eulogies at his funeral. And Scott gave this amazing, the amazing Scott Frank gave this incredible eulogy for Bill. And he, everybody had a different task at the funeral. And Scott's tranche was how Bill gave back and how, what a mentor he was. And it was big room, it was in what used to be the Ziegfeld Theater. And he, he said, "Okay, everybody in the room, who Bill read your script and took you to lunch, or called you up and like,

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  read your shit and stand up." And, "Oh my God." And like, there were forty people stood up in the room. And it was a, you could have built a movie studio for decades off the forty people that stood up. It was like, wow. Yeah, he, yeah, so.

• 1:02:11Josh Horowitz?

  So it's important for you to pay that forward?

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  I know, I feel like it's, yeah, I'm second generation with all that stuff. So I probably feel more tradition-bound than, but I really value all that. It holds great value for me, that traditional shit. No, it really does, it does, you know?

• 1:02:32Josh Horowitz?

  Keep doing the traditional shit, passing it on, making the good work. This is a huge accomplishment, man.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:02:40Josh Horowitz?

  It's not just me, this entire audience. We all love what you do and what you've contributed to Star Wars and to just great drama. And/or, season two, it's out there, you guys know it. Spread the good word and give it up one more time for the great.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  Wow, totally. Thank you.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  And so ends another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't prepared to do this by Josh.

• 1:03:27Speaker 06

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• 1:04:11Speaker 06

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