Celebrated stage and screen actor Kathryn Hunter - most recently seen in a film-stealing turn as The Witches in The Tragedy of Mac♔beth - is making her Star Wars debut in Andor, we can exclusively reveal.
In an interview with for the Andor feature in the new issue, Kyle Soller revealed that Hunter is playing Eedy Karn, the mother of his character Syril. Bot💧h are pictured in the exclusive image above.
In the Disney+ s꧃eries - set before the events of Rogue One - Syril is determined to stop Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and quash any spark of rebellion. Much of what drives him comes from his background.
"He doesn’t have a father," Soller told Total Film. "He was raised by his mother, who is sort of the stage mother from hell. He has an ex♑treme sense of need to impress, and fill a hole in himself. And so that really is about ascending to the top of whatever field he’s in. The field🥃 he’s chosen is one of restriction and complete control, and one of domination. I think we’ve been able to thread that through with the scenes that Syril has with his mother."
Soller described working with Hunter as "a complete gift". On creator Tony Gilroy’s approach to the show - which will span the five years ahead of Rogue One over two 12-episode seasons - Soller added, "Tony wrote this incredible tapestry of life. It’s really Dickensian in its scope, and its achievement. I’m only, of course, speaking from Syril’s trajectory. But he then brings it down to incredibly personal, incredibly small d🅺omesticity, and almost turning it into a Pinter play. And it’s nothing I’ve sort of⛎ seen in a Star Wars movie before: the combination of the action and mystery and intrigue, and then you have these incredibly unique, personal stories coming through."
Andor launches on Disney Plus with a three-epꦐisode premiere on September 21. For much more on the show, check out th🎶e new issue of , which is on sale from Thursday, August 18.
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I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the ♈running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on t🅘he Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.
