“Andor” series showrunner Tony Gilroy said Thursday he does not believe his “Star Wars” series is “left-wing.”
In an interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat on his podcast “Interesting Times,” Gilroy denied that he wrote the show to represent a left-wing revolution against fascist authoritarians.
“I never think about it that way. It was never- I mean, I never do. I don’t,” Gilroy declared in response to Douthat asking if he agreed the show is a “left-wing work of art.”
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The second season of the critically acclaimed series debuted on Disney+ in April. It follows the adventures of Cassian Andor, a key player in the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. He was a main character in the hit 2016 movie “Rogue One.”
The show, which lasted two seasons, provides a dark and realistic depiction about how individuals ban together to resist a creeping authoritarian government that uses deception, censorship and violence to cement its own power.
In the interview, Douthat said he believes Gilroy’s depiction of the rebellion against the empire in the series is distinctly left-wing.
While introducing his guest, he said, “The ‘Star Wars’ serial ‘Andor’ has somehow managed to pull off originality within the constraints of a familiar franchise, pleasing obsessive fans and critics alike. Part of its originality is that it has an explicitly political and, to my mind, left-wing perspective on its world, without feeling at all like tedious propaganda.”
Gilroy admitted the work was political in that it was inspired by his fascination with revolutions in world history.
“The canvas that was being offered was just a wildly abundant opportunity to use all of the nonfiction and all the history and all the amateur reading that I’d done over the past 40 years and all the things I was fascinated by, all the revolution stuff that not only I would never have a chance to do again, but I really wondered if anybody else would ever have a chance to do again,” he said.
Elsewhere, he told Douthat that he was particularly inspired by dictatorships throughout history, like Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s regime.
“I want to pay as much attention to the authoritarian side of this, the people who’ve cast their lot with the empire, who get burned by it all,” he said.
However, the showrunner denied he meant to portray the empire as a right-wing authoritarian government being undone by left-wing freedom fighters.
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“But it’s a story, but it’s a political story about revolutionary ––” the conservative columnist protested.
Gilroy interjected, “Do you identify with the Empire? Do you identify with the Empire?”
“No, I don’t,” Douthat said. “But I don’t think that you have to be left-wing to resist authoritarianism. I see the Empire as you just described it: It’s presented as a fascist institution that doesn’t have any sort of communist pretense to solidarity or anything like that. It’s fascist and authoritarian, and you’re meditating on what revolutionary politics looks like in the shadow of all that.”
