‘Andor’ star Genevieve O’Reilly breaks down Mon’s argument with Krennic

Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) is now likely to recognize Orson Krennic’s foul stench anywhere.

In season 2, episode 6 of Andor, Mon attends a party at Davo Sculden’s (Richard Dillane) home, only to come face-to-face with one of the architects of evil, Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn). Under the guise of polite party banter, the two trade barbs, each speaking on behalf of their respective cause.

They talk around various atrocities, including the riot on Ferrix and unrest on Ghorman. “Insurgencies have a long history of puffing up failures,” offers Krennic, while Mon counters, “You seem fixated on defining people by how much they resist power.”

It’s the closest we’ve seen Mon come to losing her cool in a public setting. O’Reilly says this pushing of the envelope is largely because Mon is so caught off guard by Krennic’s presence.

“Sculdun’s party is extravagant. It’s lavish, but she knows what she’s in for,” O’Reilly says. “But to come in and see Krennic in there, that’s a real surprise for her. Davo Sculdun has invited Empire right into the home, the height of the Empire into his home.”

Mon tries to maintain her usual mask, particularly as she’s accompanied by Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård), but when Krennic starts justifying the Empire’s brutality, she can’t stay silent. “She’s dancing on a knife’s edge there,” O’Reilly notes. “She would love to bring him down, but she can’t. She’s only effective if she maintains composure.”

Though Star Wars fans will know that a big moment is still to come from Mon Mothma in her work with the rebellion, for now her greatest asset remains her position in the Senate and the respect she curries. “Her diplomacy is her superpower,” O’Reilly says. “If she takes off that mask of composure and diplomacy, she’s useless to the rebellion. She’s only effective to the rebellion if she can hold all of it. And so, she must wear those masks.”

O’Reilly notes, however, that it’s as much a balancing act for Krennic, who doesn’t want to outright reveal the full extent of the Empire’s evil plans. “You can feel that tension between them,” she adds. “But of course, both of them have to play a bit of a dance because it’s public.”

That dance extended to the filming and editing of the scene as well, as the tension ratchets higher and higher cutting between Mon and Krennic’s argument and Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) attempting to remove the listening device within Sculdun’s gallery.

“These elaborate Swiss watch, multiple character, storyline crescendos, they’re hard to do,” says creator Tony Gilroy. “They’re not for the faint of heart.”

“It’s an incredible amount of side hustle work that you have to do,” Gilroy explains of preparing to shoot a scene like this. “Filming on iPhones and cutting temp versions and putting temp music and figuring out the dialogue and getting out a stopwatch. Is it believable that you could be away from a conversation that long? There’s a lot of clerical work that goes into it.”

In some ways, Gilroy and his brother, John, who served as a producer, editor, and director on Andor, had to be their own versions of Mon Mothma bolstering the troops while making this scene.

“Everyone’s got a lot of doubt on those crescendos until they come together,” Gilroy notes. “You’ve got to keep cheerleading everybody along the way, and they don’t really work until you cut them together. And then in the end, what you’re trying to do is — all that work has to disappear. It has to look so simple and inevitable.”

Just like the rebellion.