K, Wait in the Truck

Writing about The Mandalorian and Grogu yesterday, I am reminded of something I heard (can’t locate where) about the development of Andor.

Initially the showrunner was going to be Stephen Schiff (The Americans), and the concept a kind of Butch and Sundance “continuing adventures of” buddy show with Andor and K-2SO—because K-2SO stole the show in Rogue One. Quite a lot of development work was done.

At some point they asked Tony Gilroy what he thought—and I don’t want to paraphrase from memory, but his essential point was that the show would not work when one-half of the buddy team is a very conspicuous, seven-foot-tall Imperial security droid who can’t blend in to anything, really.

He joked that every episode would be, “K, wait in the truck.” And how many times could they have K wait in the truck and then come in and rescue them? As it turns out, in Andor, this is exactly what happens—they do it once.

At a certain point the wisdom of this became clear and Gilroy was handed the reins. (Schiff later wrote an episode of season one.)

It just goes to show the disconnect between what executives want—rightfully channeling what they think audiences want—and how the actual storytelling implementation can be so different.