‘Andor’ Co-Star Genevieve O’Reilly On Digging Into Legacy ‘Star Wars’ Character Mon Mothma

Genevieve O’Reilly first recreated the canon Star Wars character Mon Mothma in 2005’s Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, although most of her scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. Making up for that, O’Reilly had the enviable opportunity to revisit the character and her storied background in Disney+’s critically acclaimed drama series Andor. Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, O’Reilly reveals her intense feelings about the role through both her excellent on-screen performance as well as in the way she talks about playing Mon Mothma. She also reveals what the writing of Tony Gilroy gave her the opportunity to do, and she gives a few hints about Andor‘s Season Two. We cannot wait to see what happens next with her character.

Awards Daily: You have been playing Mon Mothma off and on since Revenge of the Sith in 2005. What has kept you interested in her all this time and did you think she’d be with you this long?

Genevieve O’Reilly: Well, Mon Mothma was just a lovely surprise from the very beginning and she just keeps giving. I think what’s been fascinating is to meet a woman when I was very young and then as I have gotten older get to learn more and more and more about her. To get the chance to explore her in depth now in Andor in a way that I never had the opportunity when the role was first presented to me. That feels really special to get to continually delve into and get to know this woman as a woman.

Awards Daily: That goes right into my next question. This has been the first time we’ve gotten to see Mon Mothma intimately in so many different aspects of her life. We meet her family, and we find out that it is not a place where she is getting any comfort. Her husband is pretty much ambivalent towards everything, and her daughter is leaning towards a conservative cult that Mon Mothma finds horrifying. What has it been like getting into that aspect of Mon Mothma’s life?

Genevieve O’Reilly: I think you’re right as a character within the universe of Star Wars she always had a presence, this woman. But I think this is the first time we get to hear her voice, we really get to meet the woman. This time we get to meet not just a senator but a woman, a wife, a mother like you said. And we learn that her struggle and her fight is not just with the Empire in the Senate. It’s almost with the empire at home .That really surprised me that’s what Tony (Gilroy) came with. I had never thought of her that way. I’m not sure how I had envisioned her, but I had never seen that life and I was fascinated to be given the narrative space and story time to really learn about this woman and learn that she is in a rebellion in both parts of her life. Nothing comes easy!

Awards Daily: Speaking of her presence, in the past she has been kind of a cameo character or she’s the leader of the Rebellion. Here she is not the leader right now. She is helping the Rebellion by financing it and she is slowly getting more involved or having more personal struggles with it. Have you thought about the future events that will happen to her to get her to that point of being the leader?

Genevieve O’Reilly: Yes, and we are right now almost finished filming Season Two of Andor. So what I love about it is that it is also perhaps different than I imagined it, different than I had expected. But you feel what Tony set up in season 1, you feel that it’s this big juggernaut of story. You know where it’s traveling and we know it is headed towards Rogue One. So in a way you know there is a lot of pain on its way. But the story line for Mon Mothma is so intricate and so interwoven in a way that is just so much more human than I ever thought Star Wars could be. I really feel her as a woman, not just as a role or a presence like you said. I feel the rebellion in her veins and not just as a fight but also as a day-to-day craft. I love playing that woman and I feel her as a woman in a way that I’m not sure I ever thought would be possible. I am not sure why that is either. But I love that in Andor we get to meet all these characters, this canon of characters who are deeply human. Who are all flawed, and Mon Mothma I feel like within Andor we have chiseled away at the sculpture a little bit. She is grittier, she is dirtier, she is more complicated, and season 2 definitely takes it that way as well.

Awards Daily: So, you already have more information than I thought you had for this next question, but one of Mon Mothma’s key contacts in the show is Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård). While he is cagey with Mon Mothma, it seems to be inadvertently mentoring her for her future role leading the Rebellion. What have you made of their dynamic? And I was going to ask if you think we’ll get more backstory, but you’ve now filmed it so you know.

Genevieve O’Reilly: Well, I love the dynamic between Mon Mothma and Luthen because, although they are both very invested in the Rebellion, they are both clearly covering, and their relationship is highly covert, and dangerous. You can feel that they both need each other and yet what’s so special about that dynamic is that I feel that both of them don’t really trust each other either. So that there is a complexity even within that you know that they are both invested in the Rebellion. But you see that the Rebellion has many different facets at the moment in Andor. Which is also something that was terribly satisfying to play. Because it was not black and white; we were deeply up to our necks in gray and muck. The relationships show that too. And although the relationship between Mon Mothma and Luthen–like if you think about the scenes in his gallery–they are so crisp, they are so sharp, they’re so tailored, there is such architecture to the scenes, and yet within it you can feel this fission between these two people who might or might not like each other. Obviously I love Stellan! He is a dream to work with. We had such joy together. The chemistry between Luthen and Mon was a fascinating thing to play with for both of us I would say.

Awards Daily: Another dynamic I really liked was the first meeting with Tay Kolma played by Ben Miles. Where you are subtly trying to see where his alliances are in this quick scene at a party. You realize he agrees with you, or at least greatly sympathizes with your viewpoints, but we also get your guys’ history so quickly. Plus also as a personal note, I love the line where you say, “I’ve learned from Palpatine.”

Genevieve O’Reilly: I love that–how much you picked up from that scene, but I also love that you say it’s a quick scene because it was seven and a half pages, and for me it was this joyous scene that you don’t get very much in television where the writer has gifted us a seven and a half page scene that is not much more than a two-hander really. I know that you get a lot of information, you meet the daughter, you see the husband, but that is seven and a half pages that they devoted to this relationship and that is a dream for an actor to give him that. I worked with Ben Miles before. He is a fine actor and so for him and I to get to play all of that–I think we shot it over one day, could be two, but it was a lot of steadicam work. They had these long shots, so it felt very instinctively like we were on stage. It was such a gift of a scene and you are right. You start with these two characters, you get a history from them, you know that they’ve known each other growing up, it weaves into their political alliances at that moment. They are both a bit nervous to divulge where they lie politically. Then when they find that not only do they hold similar values but they are willing to place rebellion in their minds in that party with the ISB around them. Then she says “Everything that people think she is is a lie.” And she reveals what her intentions are, and then she says what you brought up earlier, which is “I’ve learned from Palpatine. I show you the stone in my hand, you miss the knife at your throat.” My gosh, what a beautiful line to get to say. That to be in the middle of a seven-page scene for an actor, Tony’s writing leaves room for nuance performance. So Ben and I were really playing with how you say those words and how you hold the drama within because those words have such weight to them. It was a really special scene.

Awards Daily: Another scene that has become iconic, at least on the internet that I have seen, is your speech to the pretty much empty Senate. Where Mon Mothma is trying to do good and yet we are seeing how different everything is. What was it like doing that scene?

Genevieve O’Reilly: Hmmm, there is so much I can’t give away here. It’s very exciting. We will really have to talk next year. I think those scenes when you film them, unlike the other scenes where we were talking about very human drama related. Those Senate scenes feel quite Star Wars because I am just alone in a big green room when I’m filming it. But the new way we film is to really understand and I get to see images of what the Senate looks like, what the pods look like and how they create them. Luke Hull’s design is so beautiful. What it reveals to me even though I was by myself in a big green box, I saw the design and when I looked at it I saw just how lonely she is. What a lonely and isolated voice she is, and it probably didn’t hit me until I filmed those scenes because her world is populated, and her world is navigating spies and Empire and infiltrators. It wasn’t until I stood on that huge soundstage and saw those drawings that I realized how vulnerable and how isolated she actually is.

Awards Daily: I have nothing else on my end. Do you have anything you want to leave our readers with?

Genevieve O’Reilly: I am so grateful that people have really gone with this version of Mon Mothma. Getting to see a richer, more textured version, and we really tried to live up to who she is for fans because she is a really important woman for them. It really meant a lot to me when people like what we were doing and people have leaned into that. I am grateful for that.