A new report over on Laughing Place has detailed “Andor” creator Tony Gilroy’s recent appearance at the 2025 ATX TV Festival, where he made a surprising reveal.
The outlet confirms reports from last year that both seasons of the show came in at a staggering budget of $650 million, which works out to roughly just over $27 million per episode – a massive investment for a streaming series.
More surprisingly, though, Gilroy tells the crowd that the studio had incredible restraint with him, letting him sit back and cook: “I never took a note”. The closest they came was “We said ‘F— the Empire’ in the first season. They said, ‘Can you please not do that?’”.
The line became “Fight the Empire.” Otherwise, he and writer Beau Willimon had total creative freedom. This led to various approaches, including his “allergy to exposition”, thus reducing explan atory speeches to a minimum, and making it able to be watched in a number of ways.
He also was keen on subverting expectations, and did so right out of the gate. He said after hearing criticism of the first season being a ‘slow burn’, he leaned into it with the second season’s opening sequence: “I want everyone to think this is going to be really tedious… and then – bam – we’re going to steal a ship.”
The freedom extended to the show had no test screenings and no focus groups, allowing it to fully commit to its mature tone with morally ambiguous character relationships and more adult humour.
Gilroy adds that he “became so much of a better writer on this show because of the opportunity and because of the instruments that I had to conduct for and compose for and write to.”
The full second season of “Andor” is online on Disney+ now. The season is expected to be a lock for multiple Emmy nominations and a serious contender for Best Drama Series alongside “Severance,” “The Last of Us,” “The Pitt,” “The White Lotus,” “Slow Horses” and “The Diplomat”.
