Tony Gilroy accepted the Peabody Award for Andor this month and ended his speech with “fuck the Empire.” The line got the loudest applause of the night. It was also the culmination of a calculated two-year strategy: say nothing politically damaging while the show needed subscribers, then say everything once the awards were on the shelf.
Understanding the strategy requires understanding the timeline.
Andor began its promotional campaign in early 2025 ahead of Season 2’s spring premiere. Disney made a specific request: Gilroy was not to use the word “fascism” in press. He complied. When he and Diego Luna began doing early press, Gilroy later explained: “The actors have a broad spectrum of political ideas, and we didn’t want anybody to perjure themselves or violate their conscience. So we came up with a legit historical model. It was a very, very safe and legitimate place for us to sell the show without ever having to say what I’m free to say now.”
That last clause is the sentence. “What I’m free to say now.”
Nine months after the finale aired, with the show complete and the subscription decisions already made, Gilroy sat down with The Hollywood Reporter for the interview Disney had asked him not to give during the run. He gave it in full.
On the Trump administration: “How were we supposed to know that this clown car in Washington was going to basically use the same book that we used? So I don’t think it’s prescience so much as the sad familiarity of fascism and the karaoke menu of things that you go through to do it. You could list them from the show, or you could list them from the newspaper.”
On what he believes the administration is ultimately trying to accomplish: “I think the overall goal is to stop elections and to have a complete fascistic state. Any controversy that they can make and elevate to a hysterical pitch allows them to cancel elections or modify elections in any way they want. I think fair elections are what they’re absolutely after. I don’t think they’re going to get over, but I think the ultimate goal was always to get rid of the elections completely and just do a complete takeover. I don’t see any other plausible endgame for them.”
On why he thinks the administration will fail: “They’ve been stymied by their own stupidity. They have only a few of the pieces that you really need to take over. They have no narrative ability. They don’t really have a Goebbels or a Mike Deaver in there. They don’t have a Leni Riefenstahl. Could there be a worse bunch of clowns in charge of it right now? No. You couldn’t set the bar any lower than where it’s being set in Washington right now.”
This is the creator of Andor describing the administration that roughly half of America elected as a clown-car fascist operation planning to end elections. He said all of it after the show was done airing. He said none of it while Disney needed that half of America to subscribe.
What makes it more pointed is what Gilroy said on a different occasion. In June 2025, while still doing promotional press, he appeared on a New York Times podcast where host Ross Douthat asked whether he considered Andor a left-wing work of art. His response: “I never think about it that way. It was never — I mean, I never do. I don’t.”
Then at the Peabody Awards, with the show finished and the industry watching, he delivered this:
“We spent six years contemplating a fascist takeover of a galaxy far, far away. Six years thinking about what happens to ordinary beings when an authoritarian, insane, unchecked regime comes into the deal, and the show is really kind of what we learned. If you’re not willing to fight for the things that you love, your family, community, your culture, your planet, your truth, freedom, there’s an asshole ready to come in and take it away. We learned that bravery and sacrifice and resistance comes in all shapes and sizes, and we learned that courage is contagious. There’s so much happening, it’s a fire hose of crap that you just can’t get through. And here we are. There isn’t a news cycle that goes by right now that doesn’t contain a variety of outrages that in any other time in our history in America wouldn’t be grounds for treason. Please do not stop. Please do not turn out the lights until we can kill this nightmare… and fuck the Empire!”
He does not think of it as left-wing. He also thinks the current administration is a clown car running a fascist electoral takeover. Both things are on the record, in the same calendar year.
The commercial stakes make this more than a political story. Andor cost an estimated $650 million across two seasons. It never charted on Nielsen’s Top Ten streaming originals during its run. The show that won every award it was eligible for could not build the mass audience that would justify its budget. The people Gilroy spent two years carefully not alienating during the press tour, the people who voted for the administration he compared to the Galactic Empire in his THR interview, were not watching Andor. They were watching The Mandalorian, which opened to the lowest domestic box office number in Disney-era Star Wars history last week.
Star Wars was built on a mythological structure broad enough that every political persuasion recognized itself in it. The Rebellion meant something different to a libertarian than it did to a progressive, and both showed up at the multiplex. That universality is the entire commercial foundation of a franchise Disney paid $4 billion to acquire.
Gilroy made the most creatively serious Star Wars property in decades. He also spent two years building a documented public record of his belief that half the franchise’s audience is, functionally, the Empire. He had the discipline to wait until the show was complete before saying it. That discipline is not the same as not meaning it.
The franchise that needs that audience to buy tickets to Star Wars: Starfighter next year is now represented at its most acclaimed by a creator who called their political choices potential grounds for treason from a podium, Peabody in hand, to a room full of industry insiders who applauded.
You cannot declare war on half your audience once the subscription window closes and then expect the relationship to reset for the next film.
What do you think the long-term effect of Gilroy’s public statements is on Star Wars’ commercial future? Let us know in the comments.
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