Even These Andor Stars Were Spooked By The Show's Strangest Couple
Actors Denise Gough and Kyle Soller were delighted (no!) by the dark sides of their characters in the second season.
Eventually, they became lovers, crossed by the Death Star.
Romantics may have hoped that Dedra Miro (Denise Gough) and Cyril Carne (Kyle Soller) would find a fairytale ending in the second season of Andor, but the imperial couple were destined for more of a Shakespearean tragedy.
«We were afraid: “Will they really just fall in love?” Gough tells StarWars.com. “[Creator and executive producer] Tony (Gilroy) laughed at me when I dared to suggest that he would write something so childish.”
Instead, Gilroy and the writers have created a deep saga that deals heavily with the moral consequences of living under an authoritarian regime, a brutal norm that is as destructive as any planet-destroying battle station. Supervisor Imperial Security Bureau Miro and ISB employee Karn were doomed forever: their first love was the Empire, unable to love them back.
“The fact that there was a bureaucratic element to the Empire was so unexpected,” says Soller. “I thought, 'Okay, this is amazing. I would never have thought that there were just people moving papers. That’s exactly Cyril’s story: he could have been anyone, and that’s the worst thing, I think.”
In the early stages of development of Andora, Gilroy considered an origin episode that would have shown young Dedra growing up under government care in what would later become an Imperial kindergarten, Gough notes. So she knew about Dedra's unconventional childhood from the moment she buttoned up her uniform.
“He said she grew out of something really twisted,” says Gough. "And then they managed to do it in one line: 'I grew up in Imperial Nursery School.' Like this. Now you understand everything.She grew up without touch, without love, without care, without anything. She grew up in the regime.”
All this emotional baggage turned out to be too much burden for a healthy relationship. Let's look at awkward glances, secrets, and emotional manipulation. A scene in which Dedra practices smiling only to crack an uneasy grimace apparently even made episode director Ariel Kleiman feel uncomfortable. This was par for the course when it came to a power-hungry couple.
Fortunately, in real life the relationship between Gough and Soller as scene partners was much healthier.
“Denise is great,” says Soller. “We have [similar] theater courses and she works really hard, she’s ready for it. I think given two characters who are so strange... such complexandcomplex characters, and then you ask them to potentially form a friendship, a relationship, an alliance...
"You're thinking, 'How the hell are these two going to get together?' They are so strange and emotionless. And that was something that was really cool that we were able to explore in the final season."
This journey will end in heartbreak, imprisonment and death.
Dinner for three
At the end of the first season, Cyril saved Dedra from a violent uprising on Ferrix, and the pair shared a spark that seemed to promise fireworks to come. The steely-eyed bureaucrat was fixated on the Imperial officer, partly due to an even more unhealthy shared obsession: Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and the rebels forming under the Axis.
When Season 2 ofAndora opens a year later, the couple is on an upward trajectory, both professionally and personally.Living together in a fairly nice apartment by imperial standards. at the beginning of the season, Cyril is enjoying a mid-level position in the Imperial Bureau of Standards. Dedra's rapid rise through the ranks of the Imperial Security Bureau has brought her to the attention of Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), who plans to eradicate the planet's civilian population Ghorman as part of his secret project that will become known as the Death Star.
“Cyril is always devoted to his three obsessions: Cassian, Dedra and the Empire,” explains Soller. “He is still the Cyril we know. He is never satisfied. He constantly strives to improve. He constantly seeks approval. Even though he has a new status and he kind of enjoys it and puts himself out there by changing his style a little bit. Of course, he still has his clothing fetishes, but he still has this undercurrent of real anxiety."
This anxiety reaches siren level during the dinner party Cyril reluctantly hosts to introduce his girlfriend to the person obsessed with him—his mother. Cyril would probably rather face an armed legion of rebels than the sharp tongue of Eady Karn (Catherine Hunter).
But as soon as Cyril leaves the room to carry out a panic attack out of sight of the two women in his life - a memorable moment when Karn lies awkwardly face down on their bed - Dedra shows what kind of officer she is, establishing a new set of decrees for access to her son.The grand lady of Coruscant is not only not offended, but also impressed.
“These are two very shady women who control this man, deciding what this deal will be,” Gough laughs. "He's not in the room, so let's talk about what's really going on here." And the way Catherine looked at me, Cyril's mom is really enjoying this. What is she saying? “There’s nothing delicate about you.” This is just the next level of genius.”
As strange as it may sound, this dinner party is the closest thing to happiness that Dedra and Cyril's fans will ever get before things getverygloomy.
Ghorman Front
In the second arc of the season, we meet the duo a year later to learn that they are both connected to Gorman, as Cyril now runs the Bureau of Standards regional office. But Dedra had an ulterior motive for pushing her partner to move to the spider silk-producing colony: to infiltrate a group of potential rebels who were being secretly set up as figureheads. If a rebellion can be started, then the Empire has the pretext it needs to eradicate the population and begin its secret mining operation.
Unfortunately, Cyril won't learn the full extent of Dedra's machinations until the following year (and the third three-episode arc), just as the Empire is about to launch an attack that will become known throughout the galaxy as the Gorman Massacre.Cyril, who has begun to worry about the cell he has infiltrated, realizes that he was an unwitting accomplice and lashes out physically.
However, onAndor, karma is as powerful asThe Force.
As Cyril stumbles into the town square amid the chaos, he spots Cassian among the crowd. A brutal fight ensues, with Cyril somehow emerging victorious by pointing his blaster at his enemy. But before he can pull the trigger, the bureaucrat suffers a painful blow to his ego when Cassian doesn't recognize him. "Who are you?" - Andor asks. Before Cyril can comprehend the humiliation, he is killed by Carro Rylanz, one of the Gormans he betrayed.
At least he died doing what he loved: trying to kill Cassian Andor.
“(The way) I've always talked about Cyril is that he was in a state of becoming, but he didn't know it was in the first season,” Soller says. “And in this final season, he’s in this state of arriving at the end.”
Meanwhile, Dedra is left heartbroken and grateful.
Just a year after her success in orchestrating the Gorman massacre, Miro is arrested by Krennic after failing to capture the rebel leader Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) .Loyalty to the Empire is a one-way hyperspace lane.
“You need to be part of a tribe, not a gang,” says Gough, “and poor old Dedra gave her life to the gang, and then the gang chewed her up and spat her out.”
As Andor mines irony the same way Krennic mines kyber crystals, Dedra ends up in a prison not unlike the one in Narkina 5 from the first season. There, we can assume, she will continue to contribute to the construction of her former boss's Death Star, unable to escape or complete her imprisonment.
"We did so many different [takes]," Gough says of her character's tearful breakdown in the final montage that ends the series. “There was one where she ended up on the floor. There's one where she screams. For me it was always like this: she holds it, and holds it, and holds it, and... the light goes out and she leaves."
Since Dedra survived, we may see that awkward grin again one day. Gough certainly hopes so.
“Who knows? Dedra is in prison, maybe they'll let her out when she's 80. You never know with these worlds,” says Gough with a much warmer smile than her character might manage.