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'Andor' creator, Tony Gilroy, on the series and the Trump administration: The Bulwark [1]

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Date: 2025-09-12

It's very painful to watch muscular patriotism be appropriated by a bunch of fucking idiots and draft dodgers and wimps. The whole faux macho brigade that's tromping around steakhouses and smoking cigars. Tony Gilroy, creator of 'Andor"

I’m not usually one to sit through 45 minute interviews, but this one had me transfixed throughout.

For those familiar with the Star Wars genre “spinoff” known as Andor, you already know what an achievement it is. You also know it’s not traditional “Star Wars” (or any of its progeny) in any way, shape or form. There are no light sabers, no Jedi. There is no cartoonish villain, no rollicking spaceship battles. There is no clever, frivolous banter between heroic characters or aliens painted with broad brushtrokes for all-ages entertainment. It isn’t really “popcorn-munching” fare at all.

Instead this is a deeply, intensely written psychological drama about some very conflicted and desperate people doing their level best to survive — on one side or the other — in a nascent autocracy that is rapidly and mercilessly transforming itself into a brutal dictatorship. There are so many echoes in Andor of what is occurring now, in this world and in this country, they are fairly impossible to miss.

The following interview of Tony Gilroy, the show’s creator and one of its principle writers, by Sonny Bunch, Culture Editor of the Bulwark, allows Gilroy to more fully explicate his own views and relate them to those expressed in the show. It’s absolutely extraordinary.

I’ve taken the liberty of pulling a copy of the video interview off of You Tube. The transcript of the interview itself can be accessed here.

I am transposing some of the best parts of this interview here, with the stipulation that this is Bunch’s work, and its the property of the Bulwark. Nonetheless, I think Fair Use will allow me some degree of reposting.

One of the points that Gilroy makes is that some of the characters in Andor (such as Cyril) who end up working for the Empire do so out of fear. And Gilroy sees the same behavior in many of those who have cleaved to the Trump administration.

GILROY:

“I mean, look at a character like Cyril. I mean, so he's been emotionally terrorized by his mother, right, his whole life, and life is chaos, and no father, and God, that emotionally, you know, fascistic assault that he's grown up in. So what's he going to gravitate for? Well... I mean, why do a lot of people gravitate towards authoritarianism? You become the thing that you're afraid of, right? If you're really afraid of the monster, if you become the monster, you don't have to be afraid anymore, right? I mean, that's the classic thing. And so he's kind of a fantasist and he's got a romantic interior life. But he's terrified. And, wow, if I become a cop and if I become an ass kicker, if I become part of the empire, if I become part of the monster, if I become part of the bigger thing, I don't have to be afraid anymore . And so many people, that is such a, I mean, drop a, throw a stone in Washington, D.C. or Mar-a-Lago right now. What are you going to do? I mean, oh, my God. Why sign on to this death ship? It's because you're afraid of something. What are you afraid of?

With respect to the parallels between the Trump administration’s actions and the actions of the Empire as depicted in Andor in attempting to impose its rule, Gilroy notes that there was serious concern as to how the show would be interpreted in the run-up to the election, but the actions of this administration now seem to be so evocative of what occurs in Andor, that it almost seems as if the Trump people are taking their cues from the show, rather than the other way around.

GILROY:

I mean, we've come to the conclusion now it's their fault. I mean, they're doing it. They're mocking. They're matching the show. It's not us. It's not us telling that. It's not us saying, hey, look how fucked up you are. It's them going, they're fucked up. sort of jokingly, but half wondering, is Stephen Miller watching the show? Are they watching the show and like saying, oh, let's rip Padilla out of the ICE meeting. Let's, let's, let's have, let's invade the streets of Chicago. Let's nationalize, let's start nationalizing companies by bribery instead of the traditional fact.

Gilroy has some choice words about Trump’s recent foray into “Apocalypse Now” imagery, holding up “the smell of deportations in the morning” as some sort of cute cultural signifier for his immigration policies:

What a classic example of. of misreading absolutely everything you're doing. I mean, if you watch that movie and you understand what that movie is about and you understand what that character's about, you understand what's happening there, you have any sense at all, it's just like, it's, the stupidity is staggering. And the fact that stupidity is winning is, I don't even know, anyway. Yeah, I saw it, I saw it, I did. He thinks that the Trump administration has gone so far in down the authoritarian rabbit hole that the issues it raises now go beyond ideological, beyond “left" or “right:” It's just stupidity and intelligence. It's RFK getting up and, like, I mean, wait till oligarchs' kids start dying from lack of vaccine, you know? I mean... Yeah. Yeah. No, I... We are long past ideology. So I find, I think, couching it in left-right or progressive and... or even red and blue, the whole thing is wrong, man. This is a binary... There's a binary struggle for whatever morality we have left. [***] One of the overwhelming ideas in Andor is the destruction of community on every level. On a family level, on a city level, on a cultural level, on a planetary level, on a society... The destruction of all community. It's really... It's all the way through where communities are being destroyed and broken up. And that... That's what's happening here. I mean, what community other than a MAGA rally is coming together? Name a community that's forging together where people are taking care of each other or doing the things that normally happen in it. Let's get rid of FEMA. Let's get rid of FEMA. And let's get rid of all of the block and tackle and all of the, let's get rid of everything that we've learned over the last couple hundred years about how to take care of people and keep them safe, just on a basic level. Let's get rid of all that shit. And let's just, everybody just, I mean, I am, I would not know how to write it. Gilroy’s frustration at the failure of the American people to react to the atrocities being committed on a daily basis in this country is palpable:

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/12/2343246/-Andor-creator-Tony-Gilroy-on-the-series-and-the-Trump-administration-The-Bulwark?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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