[This story contains spoilers for Andor season two.]

When Andor creator Tony Gilroy cast Elizabeth Dulau in early 2021, he knew he was getting a talented actor who had just graduated London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). But he soon realized that he actually hired a budding star who was worthy of significantly more screen time in season two. “By the time we finished season one, everyone on our whole show was just in awe [of Elizabeth]. We don’t have a moment of bad film on her,” Gilroy recently told The Hollywood Reporter. 

In season one, Dulau’s character, Kleya Marki, was considered to be the “sorcerer’s apprentice” to Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael, who was a part-time antiquities dealer and a full-time shadowy leader of the emerging Rebellion. However, season two has now revealed their relationship’s profoundly tragic origin story. Luthen was once an Imperial Sargeant, and during a genocidal raid on adolescent Kleya’s homeplanet, he suffered a crisis of conscious mid-attack, before noticing that a young girl he would eventually name Kleya had stowed away on his ship. From there, they formed a duo, becoming the surrogate father and daughter of the Rebellion. 

In hindsight, Dulau can’t help but laugh at the beginnings of her on-screen partnership with Skarsgård.

“My agent said, ‘The only note [from your Andor callback] was you seemed a little bit nervous. So they want to see you again. Walk in that room with as much confidence as you can; walk in that room like you are the dog’s bollocks,’” Dulau tells THR, quoting her rep’s words. “Then she said, ‘Also, you’ll be reading at Pinewood Studios opposite Stellan Skarsgård, but don’t let that make you nervous.’ I think I just burst out laughing because that’s insane. It was just an unbelievable thing to hear.”

Like many heavy hitters do, Skarsgård made a point to disarm Dulau before they first read together as Luthen and Kleya. So whatever anxiety she had about their differing statuses was moot by the time they actually started filming together. Fast forward to season two, Dulau had one particularly fateful scene in the back of her mind the entire production, and it’s the seismic moment from writer Tom Bissell’s tenth episode, “Make It Stop,” in which Kleya has to end Luthen’s life. Denise Gough’s Dedra Meero finally cracked the case involving Luthen and Kleya’s Axis network, and while she was briefly distracted mid-arrest, Luthen attempted to end his life to protect the Rebellion’s many remaining secrets from the Empire’s information extraction apparatus.

Knowing that Meero was able to keep Luthen on life support, Kleya sprung into action and infiltrated the hospital that admitted him. That’s when Dulau essentially became the star of her own spy-action movie, as Kleya blew up a spaceport as a diversion and killed numerous Stormtroopers in a surgical manner. As soon as Kleya gained access to Luthen’s hospital room, she immediately closed the window, sealing the room from any adjacent sunlight. This act was a nod to Luthen’s season one monologue about how he’s turned his mind into a “sunless space” and sacrificed everything for a “sunrise” he’ll never see. Kleya then pulled the plug on her adoptive father’s life, fulfilling Luthen’s own prophecy in the process. 

“[That monologue] has always been there in the background,” Dulau says. “I was super nervous because it felt like the entire filming process was leading up to that day. I always had it in the back of my mind, and I deliberately tried not to overthink it. When I looked at Stellan lying there on this hospital bed, I really felt heartbroken for what Kleya was about to do.”

Prior to Luthen’s capture, he was able to pass off key pieces of intelligence to Kleya in regard to the Empire’s top-secret development of the Death Star. Kleya then delivered the intel to Cassian when he arrived to rescue her, post-hospital mission, and transport her to Yavin. It’s a fitting end to their relationship considering Kleya once ordered Cassian’s death due to his knowledge of Luthen. Overall, Kleya is now one of several dominos that led to Luke Skywalker’s destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). 

“It’s not lost on me that Tony Gilroy has literally written me into Star Wars history that dates back to the ‘70s. My mom and dad queued up at midnight to watch A New Hope,” Dulau shares. “And knowing that they’re going to see my small part in that chain of events that leads to those stories, I’m just so grateful that Tony would hand me that domino. I really didn’t want to fuck it up. I really wanted to do justice to this opportunity that he’s given me.”

Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR, Dulau (pronounced d’low à la y’know) also discusses Kleya’s off-screen future and why she doesn’t mind being an “unsung hero” of the Rebellion.

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Andor creator Tony Gilroy made it sound like you went straight from RADA to the set of Andor season one. Was it actually that direct of a route?

Well, I walked off stage at RADA straight into the pandemic. We were literally four performances into a production of The Importance of Being Earnest; I was playing Lady Bracknell. Our artistic director said, “Tonight will be the final performance.” So we all had a big old cry, and we did the show before we all disappeared. We thought we’d be back in three weeks, but of course, we weren’t. The audition for Andor then came around in November of 2020, so I spent those six months [in between] not really sure what to do.

You then discover that you’re going to be working almost exclusively with Stellan Skarsgård. How intimidated were you in those early days?

I had my recall just before Christmas, the day before another lockdown. We then came back in January [2021], and my agent said, “The feedback from the recall was that they really liked you. They thought you were great. The only note was you seemed a little bit nervous. So they want to see you again, and they just want to make sure that you’ll be able to handle yourself. So walk in that room with as much confidence as you can; walk in that room like you are the dog’s bollocks.” Then she said, “Also, you’ll be reading at Pinewood Studios opposite Stellan Skarsgård, but don’t let that make you nervous.” (Laughs.) I think I just burst out laughing because that’s insane. It was just an unbelievable thing to hear.

But, because of Covid and all the restrictions, we had to wait for Stellan to be allowed to fly into the country. So there were still a few weeks in between to prep, and I prepped like hell. I learned all my lines upside down, back to front, sideways. I then met Stellan for ten minutes before that final audition, and we chatted over coffee. Stellan has this wonderful magic about him. You just forget that he’s the legend Stellan Skarsgård. He really makes you feel at ease, and after just those ten minutes with him, I really felt like I was walking in the room with a friend, with someone who had my back and was there for me. And he was that way, continuously, throughout the next three years. I was intimidated by the scale of this production and how new it all felt, but I’ve never felt intimidated by Stellan. He always felt like my pal who’s got my back.

When did you learn that you were in store for a huge promotion in season two?

It was in the summer before season one came out in September 2022. It was just before it came out because we knew that we were going to start shooting that November [2022]. Tony called me that summer to tell me everything that happened for Kleya this season, and I was just completely speechless. The arc he’s created for me this season is just mind-blowing, and I’m so grateful to him. I love it when I’m scared of a job. I love it when the challenge is so immense and it’s like, “Oh my God, can I do that?” Deep down, I always know that I can, but it’s still scary.

An argument could be made that Kleya is the main character of the final three-episode block. Even when she is off screen, she’s the focal point of both the Rebellion and the Empire. Did your jaw hit the floor when you read 210 for the first time and you realized you were leading your own spy movie?

Yeah, Tony first told me how that would end, and I was shocked. And reading it, I just felt enormously grateful to him for writing such an interesting role. I felt really supported by this giant, Tony Gilroy, in that moment. She’s just such a compelling character, and at this point in my career, when I just graduated not too long ago, it means the world that he had that much faith in me to write an arc like this.

We finally learned her backstory as to how she met Luthen. He was a sergeant for the Empire, and while his unit was raiding Kleya’s village, she stowed away on his ship amid his moral panic attack. How did that backstory compare to what you imagined throughout season one?

I deliberately tried not to imagine anything, and it was really hard because that’s the opposite of how I like to work. I come from a theater background where you have the whole play. So you can allow your imagination to run riot about their lives beforehand, and not being able to do that on season one felt very strange. So I just went with everything that Tony had [originally] told me. He told me that Kleya would die for Luthen, and that she is entirely and utterly committed to this man. So I just took that and ran with it, and I tried not to get too caught up in the why, because I was hoping it would be answered later down the line. And I’m really glad I did that, because if I had tried to imagine some kind of backstory for her, then I might have made choices in season one that would’ve made my life more difficult on season two. So I really left her backstory and my imagination totally blank during season one. I just waited for it to be given to me for season two, and what a treat it was. 

Younger Luthen and Kleya were a lot like the Joel and Ellie of Star Wars.

(Laughs.) I see the comparison [to The Last of Us], but I think it’s darker. That story obviously has its darkness as well, but Luthen and Kleya, my heart breaks when I think about them. The love that grows between them is incidental. Neither of them want to acknowledge the fact or admit to themselves that they’ve come to love one another because of that day 16 or 17 years ago. Luthen came to Kleya’s people, and he had a hand in destroying them all. That day can never be erased. It can never be forgotten. They can’t just forgive and forget that; it’s too huge an event. So that darkness stays with them in a way that makes their story quite unique. I remember Tony referencing Paper Moon when talking about their relationship, but it’s also different from Paper Moon. It’s just so much darker. What Luthen did to her people all those years ago, or what he contributed to, is horrifying. So that can never go anywhere, but their love grows incidentally around it.

She has to Mission: Impossible her way through a hospital in order to put an end to comatose Luthen’s life, and it’s a very emotional moment involving the father and daughter of the Rebellion. What was your state of mind on the day?

Well, I was super nervous because it felt like the entire filming process was leading up to that day. I always had it in the back of my mind, and I deliberately tried not to overthink it. I remember just doing a lot of deep breathing to try to stay calm. The thing with scenes that have the potential to be really emotional is you have to stay relaxed to allow them to come through. Nerves can really lock you up. So I did a lot of deep breathing, and I suppose I just tried to not put too much pressure on myself because I’m very good at that. I tried to just reassure myself that whatever work I do on this day is going to be good enough because it has to be. So I tried to just be super kind myself, which helped keep me relaxed. It helped me really commit to the imagined circumstances, and when I looked at Stellan lying there on this hospital bed, I really felt heartbroken for what Kleya was about to do.

As soon as she closed the window to his hospital room, I thought of Luthen’s big season-one monologue about his “sunless” mind and the “sunrise” he’ll never get to see due to all that he’s sacrificed for the Rebellion. And so it’s just so fittingly tragic that she has to pull the plug on him in a sterile room with artificial lighting. Did the script make reference to that famous speech? Or did everybody infer that callback on their own?

The script didn’t overtly pay reference to that monologue, but it has always been there in the background. When fans watched that monologue in season one, I feel like they knew that he’s not going to make it. It’s dramatic irony.

Or a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yeah, totally. The script was really beautiful, actually. There was very little on the page, and it gave a lot of space for me to fill in the blanks. The very last words were something like “a moment to pay our respects for this man,” and I think you feel that in the scene because he’s this huge figure within the Rebellion. So the audience deserves that moment to say goodbye to him.

There’s an amusing moment prior to all that. Kleya disguises herself as a nurse who’s escorting an alien in a wheelchair, and the alien mumbles something in the elevator to which Kleya humorously responds, “What?” Was that scripted? 

(Laughs.) That was [director] Alonso [Ruizpalacios] having fun. That was actually a really hard moment to shoot. There was a puppeteer underneath the alien on this wheelchair, and she couldn’t see what she was doing because she was completely hidden. So Alonso would have to give her notes about what to do, and he was really getting into it. Bearing in mind, I’m going up this elevator to kill my best friend, so I have to look completely serious. But Alonso was off to the side, going, “Granny’s looking around, granny’s enjoying the elevator ride and granny’s having a lovely time.” He was saying all that to get the right attitude from the alien, and I just burst out laughing. There weren’t many times where I corpsed on that set, but that was one time. So I had to really get it together again, and that scene was just so at odds with how I was trying to feel in the moment.

Cassian eventually rescues Kleya from the safe house and takes her to Yavin. When he first arrives at the door, Kleya says, “It would be you, wouldn’t it?” Is that a comment on the fact that she once ordered his death in 107? Or is it more connected to 209’s conversation about Cassian wanting to quit after he extracts Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly)?

I actually always imagined it as something slightly different. There’s a moment in [209] when Luthen says to Cassian, “You [always] appeared when I needed you.” And he finds it to be a slightly strange thing. I wonder if Luthen is the kind of character who has a curiosity around things like the Force and those more fantasy elements that we see in Star Wars. So I always imagined that Luthen had said something like that to Kleya [off screen]: “There’s something special about Cassian. He always really comes through for us in the end, even though he’s reluctant.” So that’s what I had in my mind when Kleya sees him at the door: “Oh, of course, it’s Cassian that’s here after Luthen has said all this to me about him. Of course, he’s the one that pulls through in the end, again.”

The final shot of Kleya at sunrise alludes to this, but do you think she eventually found belonging at Yavin? 

Is Kleya the kind of character that’s ever able to do that? This is the question. I’d love for her to have that, but that would be an entirely new concept in and of itself for Kleya. She’s never had a sense of home, belonging, safety and friendship. These would be very new concepts for her, and I’d be intrigued to see if that’s something she’s even able to do.

Beyond that, have you imagined what else Kleya might be up to during the events of Rogue One and Star Wars: A New Hope?

I’m going to watch Rogue One after Andor is all aired. I’ve deliberately avoided it because it felt too soon, somehow. I really want to indulge in being able to watch the end of this series that’s been such a huge part of my life and see how it all fits in. But imagining what Kleya is doing off screen during those Rogue One and A New Hope years, oh my gosh. It’s a huge question, isn’t it? So I don’t know, and I certainly wouldn’t want to come up with the answer to that. A brilliant writer would do a much better job.

It must be pretty surreal to know how much influence your character has on the future Star Wars stories, some of which have been around for four-plus decades. She was one of several dominos that led to Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star.

Oh my God, it is completely mind-blowing. It’s not lost on me. It’s not lost on me that Tony Gilroy has literally written me into Star Wars history that dates back to the ‘70s. My mom and dad queued up at midnight to watch A New Hope. And knowing that they’re going to see my small part — or, as you say, a domino — in that chain of events that leads to those stories, I’m just so grateful that Tony would hand me that domino. I felt like that when we were shooting it. I really didn’t want to fuck it up. I really wanted to do justice to this opportunity that he’s given me, and I didn’t want to let him down. I didn’t want to let Stellan down. I didn’t want to let myself down. The history that Tony has written me into is huge, and I really wanted to honor that. I also didn’t want to let the fans down. I know how much it means to them, and they’ve been so wonderful.

Each block of episodes in season two has an unseen year in between, and Diego Luna/Adria Arjona told me that they’d love to come back to tell the story between season one and season two where their characters fell back in love. Is there a particular unseen year that you’d love to come back and tell?

The year between 209 and 210 is very interesting. Mon Mothma is now the official figurehead of the Rebellion on Yavin, and Luthen and Kleya feel left out in the cold. So I’d be really interested to see how that happened, and I think it would be really quite painful. There’s a connection between Mon, Kleya and Luthen. They’ve known each other for years by this point, and they’ve come to trust each other. Mon is someone that Kleya has come to really respect. The speech she makes at the Senate and everything that she throws away to become the leader of the Rebel Alliance, I always played it as something that Kleya really respects. So, to then feel cast out by her and the other leaders on Yavin, that’s a very painful thing that happened for her and Luthen. That would be interesting to explore.

Andor is ultimately about the unsung heroes of the Rebellion. Luthen and Kleya paved the way for the Rebel Alliance, and there are only a few characters who refuse to let their foundational work be forgotten. Granted, Luthen and Kleya hadn’t been created yet at the time of these future yet preceding stories, but it can still be said that they didn’t get the long-term recognition they deserved as the father and daughter of the Rebellion. 

Yeah, it is sad, but they didn’t get into this for credit. They operate in the shadows. That’s who they are. That’s another thing that Luthen’s speech is all about. He and Kleya have completely come to terms with the fact that to achieve the “greater good,” they sometimes have to do things that are morally ambiguous. They’re willing to stray into those moral gray areas in order to find the light again, and because they’re willing to go to those places, I don’t think they would even feel comfortable getting any credit. They’re certainly not in it for that. God, if someone was to try to give Kleya a medal one day, I really don’t know that she would accept it. It’s not her vibe.

Many decades from now, when you’re swaying back and forth in a rocking chair and your loved ones are gathered around you, what day on Andor will you tell them about first? 

Oh God, I’m going to cry. The most fun I had on set was the shot when Kleya shoots these two Stormtroopers on the top floor of the hospital. They rigged pyrotechnics to come out the back of them. So I pulled the trigger on a blaster, and it actually had an effect. There were sparks flying everywhere. I could fully invest in this imagined reality that I’m shooting these bad guys. So I think I’d tell them about that and these three consecutive night shoots in Valencia [Spain]. These were the scenes at the party in 206 where Kleya is getting the bug out of the exhibit. There were hundreds of extras on that set, and everyone was dressed in space haute couture. Aliens were serving cocktails, and droids were zipping about. So that is a memory I’ll never forget. Those scenes really made me feel like I was in Star Wars. It was completely magical to be in a galaxy far, far away

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Andor season two is now streaming on Disney+.