[Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for Episode 9 of Season 2 of “Andor.”]
If you build it, they will come — even if sometimes “they” are stormtroopers looking to arrest you for speaking out against Emperor Palpatine. Production designer and executive producer Luke Hull conquered a portion of Pinewood Studios to create the incredible sets of “Andor” Season 2, but one of his top concerns was how to execute the plaza of the Senate building on Coruscant. To do this, he turned some quite real places in our world.
The Imperial Senate is a tricky and thankless location to create. It needed to exist in a way that held true to the glimpses we’ve already seen in other films and series, but worked for what “Andor” needed. And after Episode 9, “Welcome to the Rebellion,” we know that the “Rogue One” prequel series needed quite a lot from its Senate building: the sense of a large government complex with multiple entrances and security checkpoints, winding corridors, loading docks and parking complexes, plus a certain monumentality to project the status of the place, even while it’s completely under the thumb of the Emperor. Oh, and all of that needed to look like “Star Wars.”
“[The style is] not just 1920s, kind of Art Deco, you know? That I’m less interested in, and I think you can see it in our Coruscant. It’s very different. It hopefully feels like a city that could exist in that world. But there’s a Calatrava architecture or things with odd-shaped windows or complex curves [that start] to have the bones of something you can work with,” Hull told IndieWire. “I do think you can shoot ‘Star Wars’ on location really successfully, actually.”
Hull was embedded into creator Tony Gilroy’s writing process from the start of Season 2 and worked with the writing team to develop the show’s settings organically. In the case of locations like Ferrix and Palmo, full town layouts encompassed how people might express themselves through material culture and the level of wealth and status they possess. Entering the creative process so early meant that Hull could scout locations that could be credible starting points for “Star Wars” settings — even ones that ended up being built in Pinewood Studios.
“You never walk into anything that you can just shoot. There’s always work to be done. But it’s just interesting, and I think [locations] actually also help inspire some of the sets we did later. I think it’s very easy to do a very contrived thing, especially under pressure and the time that we have. You sketch out something that you think is unique and realize you’ve rehashed something that feels ‘Star Wars’ but isn’t,” Hull said.
Hull toured Italy, France, and Spain to find some of those layers, particularly as they might relate to the peak of the political power on Coruscant. “That was where we were most aware of class and status. The whole concept is that those who have are on top and those [who] have not are down below. And to be honest, I don’t think we spend enough time below,” Hull said.
Both Hull and his production team and the Disney+ series’s own VFX team use the weight of Barbican estate style and brutalist architecture to create the sense of order being imposed on those lower levels of the city. They then juxtapose it with the gleaming, sometimes quite literally ivory towers of the elite. The city’s design makes it a palpable, visual relief to see the sky or the gleaming blue of the reflection ponds in the Senate Plaza.
That more humane sense of space comes through because “Andor” found a place that has those white elephant bones and Calatrava-style architecture on a large enough scale: the City of Arts and Sciences complex in Valencia, Spain.
“That plaza was a science and arts museum Calatrava site in Valencia that has been shot before … knowing that it’s going to [be featured], we went back repeatedly to plan where Mon [Genevieve O’Reilly] would come from, how that would relate to the Senate, what that is, and as Tony wrote more pieces to it that were increasingly and correctly bureaucratic in terms of the nest of security and things, we went all over that site to try and achieve that,” Hull said.
The complex in Valencia couldn’t provide everything that “Andor” needed to chase Mon out of the Senate, of course. But being there helped inform the logic of the parts of the complex he and his team would have to build, from service corridors to where the canteens would be.
“There was one part of the location we really wanted to use for the scene where they come out of Gate 9, and the imperial plant is waiting for them. We wanted that to actually be out in the main atrium. It was way more shocking to have Stormtroopers in the Senate, but there are certain limits to what you can do on location, generally. So we built quite a lot of these elements,” Hull said.
Another thing that Hull built out was the geography of the Senate. He did want to feel beholden to other depictions in other “Star Wars” films and series, but still needed to keep the general shape of what we’d seen before. To do this, Hull ended up modeling out a view of Coruscant and then trying to find points he could logically connect and expand on. “[We] went looking for real plazas to put between it, not worrying about the statues that you see in the prequels and things like that, because there’s a timeline thing there, possibly. But also, you know, maybe we’re on the other side of it. And particularly with the way Tony writes, it’s about understanding where you are as an audience.”
Where we are as an audience throughout the escape sequence of Episode 9 is in turmoil, mainly, as Cassian (Diego Luna) and Mon rush to escape the Senate lockdown while trying to keep their fear of discovery, of themselves and the whole rebellion, in check. The expansive corridors and soaring spikes of the Senate building — all that clear, glistening glass on the windows and the elevator doors — are an almost mocking contrast, showing our rebels that there is almost nowhere they can hide.
It’s ultimately that sense of the Empire’s hand that Hull and his team convey through all their choices, on set and on location, making the world of “Star Wars” feel even bigger than it looks. “It just felt epic, in a way that I was worried about going into the project, that we wouldn’t be able to achieve,” Hull said.
“Andor” is currently streaming on Disney+
