Andy Serkis was worried about stoking Snoke rumors with his Andor role
Before Andor, Andy Serkis appeared in the Star Wars universe, playing Supreme Leader Snoke in the sequel trilogy
TV News Andor
Motion capture king Andy Serkis has notably been a real boy onscreen this year, first in his turn as Alfred in The Batman, and now in three episodes of Andor. However, the Disney+ series isn’t the actor’s first time appearing in the Star Wars universe: he previously appeared as Supreme Leader Snoke in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
Naturally, this prompted speculation that the Lord Of The Rings star would be reprising his previous role, in which he was rendered totally unrecognizable. Serkis is instead introduced as Kino Loy, a prisoner of the Empire who provides one of Andor’s many compelling perspectives on commitment to the rebellion. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor opens up about taking on a second role in the franchise.
“…I thought it would cause complete uproar and more confusion for the audience, thinking that there would be some sort of connection between the Supreme Leader and Kino Loy,” Serkis says. “So that was my only [hang-up]. I thought, ‘Am I really going to go into this melee of uncertainty again?’ but I was such a huge fan of Rogue One. I really truly thought that it was a great film. So Tony Gilroy and I met, and he explained what he wanted to do with this character, this world and this particular segment of the world.”
Andor, which follows Diego Luna’s titular character in the years leading up to Rogue One, has been praised for its grounded stakes and nuanced examination of what it takes to build the resistance.
“So, to play someone at the opposite end of the spectrum as the Supreme Leader and from a very human perspective, someone who’s coping with the Empire crushing his very soul, I just found that idea to be really exciting and really kind of intoxicating,” Serkis continues. “So once I got through the Snoke-theory quagmire, it didn’t take me long to commit.”
Andor is now streaming weekly on Disney+.
45 Comments
This man classes up any project he’s in, Andor included. What a performance.
He’s so great in Andor. It does sting to be reminded of how much Snoke was squandered in TLJ.
That character was a whole lotta nothing wrapped up in JJ Abrams’ mystery box; the most exciting thing that character did was die. I genuinely mean that; “what’s going to happen now that this guy is dead?” and “what does this mean for Kylo going forward?” were a lot more interesting story questions than “who is this guy?”
I agree that he turned out to be “a whole lotta nothing”, but that was a choice made. I was interested in finding about about him, and wish a different choice was made.
“what’s going to happen now that this guy is dead?” and “what does this mean for Kylo going forward?”Unfortunately, the answer was “Fuck” and “all”
Yeah, we didn’t get very far into TLJ before seeing that this guy was just the Emperor all over again, which is about all we could’ve guessed from the first movie anyway. No tears for Snoke, get out of the way.
Snoke died in the service of TLJ’s ‘Your leaders don’t necessarily make the right decisions just because they’re your leaders’ message. Snoke’s death was an example of hubris in leaders.At least that’s how I interpret that mess of a movie.
I interpret the scene as “no, you’re wrong” to any Star Wars fan who wanted Luke to strike down the emperor in RotJ.
I think it’s bigger than that: Hux is an idiot, Holdo is a narcissist who doesn’t trust the people under her, Leia is too emotional and berates Poe for turning what would be a killing blow against the Resistance into an amazing victory, Snoke dies right as he’s bragging about how Kylo Ren is in his thrall.
All different, distinct facets of bad leadership that are explored in the movie.Plus, are there actually fans who think Luke should have killed the Emperor? The movie makes it pretty clear that Luke doing the killing would have been the exact wrong thing to do.
The movie makes it pretty clear that Luke doing the killing would have been the exact wrong thing to do.Yeah, but a lot of people are stupid, too.
Would that mean Rey did the wrong thing? In Star Wars, killing the Sith on sight is nearly always the right thing to do.
Star Wars has not been the most consistent in its messaging, definitely. Obi Wan kills Darth Maul (eventually), and would the galaxy have not been better off if Windu had managed to take out Palpatine before Anakin showed up?
You may have put more thought into it than the film makers did.
Yes, never before had Star Wars introduced such an intriguing, nuanced character as [GENERIC EVIL SITH GUY WITH A FUCKED UP FACE].
??? In good hands it could have been a memorable, interesting character. Instead it went nowhere.
And my contention is: no he couldn’t have been, because he was just a generic Palpatine clone from the start (quite literally, as it turns out in TRoS). Casually offing him in TLJ was one of Johnson’s better decisions.
Well, I disagree. Sure, kill him, but flesh him out first.
Weird how people always frame this as the fault of the guy who killed him off in the second movie, and not the guy who failed to characterize him in the first.
Not sure who these “people” are, but I think all of the sequel trilogy is very bad.
TLJ did the only possible interesting to do with that character which was to kill him.
Lots of characters in SW get killed. The Empower, Vader, Padme, Obi-Wan, etc. You do interesting things with them first, though.
lol I forgot all about Snoke.
Somehow he didn’t survive.
I wish they’d made Snoke a giant.
After TFA I had kind of assumed the “joke” would turn out to be that Snoke was actually really small, like an evil Yoda. I was fine with Johnson making him just some mook, though.
I was hoping for that too
“…I thought it would cause complete uproar and more confusion for the audience; but then I remembered I’m a white male and figured ‘It’ll be fine!’”
lol, nobody cares about the sequels
Having seen the utter affection for the prequels from people who were kids when they came out, I wouldn’t be surprised to see they have a following ~10-15 years from now.
Yeah, I don’t get my fellow millennials’ love for the prequels. I was 12 when Phantom Menace came out and I remember liking it okay, but by the time Attack of the Clones came out my eyes were open to the awfulness. I did have a Gen X older brother influencing me though.
The prequels were only made retroactively better with the Clone Wars show. A movie shouldn’t need something 10 years later to make up for its shortcomings. The worst part of the prequels was how like Snoke their villains also had no real development and died in disappointing ways.
Same, and we’re about the same age. I think part of the recent love for them is due to the things those had that were missing in the sequels. For all the faults of the prequels (and there are many) they did expand the universe of Star Wars. The sequels didn’t really do that. I think for a lot of people, the real appeal is the universe building more than the actual stories, and the sequels failed on both fronts, whereas the prequels at least delivered some new imaginative settings, etc.
I was 12 going on 13 that summer too, so we’re in a similar boat. That probably means you were in college as Sith came out, so you were old enough to be questioning how good this stuff really is. There are people 5-10 years younger than us who grew up on those movies as well as the Clone Wars/Rebels cartoons which fleshed out a lot of the gaps in the prequels. Hence all the love and goodwill towards Filloni.
All it’ll take is someone making something worse.
Spoiler alert for this weeks episode -…Are we going to see him again? Will Andor try to go back for him? I hope we get more Kimo in the next two episodes.
I think so; the show is smart enough that they wouldn’t just leave that thread dangling.
I don’t know if I’d consider that a smart move honestly. Let that be the tragic moment that it is and have that be the end of the character. Not everything needs to be so neatly wrapped up.
I’m not asking for a neat little package; I just got the impression the show wasn’t done with him. I’ve been wrong before.
It’s not dangling. He’s a man who can’t swim trapped in the middle of the ocean with imperial soldiers who will kill him the second they find him. Just because we don’t see it happen doesn’t mean it’s not a rational foregone conclusion. (I say “rational” because this is Star Wars, where falling thousands of feet never kills anyone. I’m just hopeful this show is smart enough to not recycle that trope for the umpteenth time.)
I’d say it’s dangling in the sense that he was instrumental in the prison riot and his character had a strong arc throughout; the way Andor is just pushed off the platform and that’s the last we see Kino, could be a bittersweet end for Kino, but most shows would put more emphasis on Kino being stuck where he is. I simply get the impression we’ll probably see him still on the prison when the Imperials come to restore order, or maybe see that he got off the prison (less likely).
In an ISB meeting next week there will be a quick “we took off and nuked it from orbit” status update.
“It was the only way to be sure.”
Star Trek (ToS) would re-use character actors so often, it would probably make a lot of modern fandom explode. Christ, Mark Lenard’s first appearance on the show was not as Sarek but as a Romulan commander. That would launch a thousand idiotic fan theories today, each one leading to no fewer than a half-dozen posts on this very site.
Funny how literal people are these days, especially considering how media savvy one has to be to navigate the world. DS9 reused Tony Todd and Jeffrey Combs ad nauseam; if that show came out today, you’d have youtube videos of people insisting there was some meta, in-story connection.
Stoking Snoke leads to snorting coke.