From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is in trouble. The Hollywood Dream Factory has gone stagnant,

recycling the same stories time and time again. Giants, like Marvel, feel too big to fail, but they've lost the ability to tell us new

and surprising stories.

But there is one notable exception.

The Star Wars serial Andor has somehow managed to pull off originality within the constraints

of a familiar franchise, and part of its originality within the constraints of a familiar franchise.

And part of its originality is that it has an explicitly political, and to my mind,

left-wing perspective on its world, without feeling at all like tedious propaganda.

My guest today is the showrunner behind Andor, Tony Gilroy.

We're going to talk about how art and politics interact in a show about radicals trying to defeat fascism,

and whether Hollywood can ever tell stories for grown-ups again.

So Tony Gilroy, welcome to interesting times.

Thank you for having me.

So I want to start by congratulating you on what I personally think a large number of critics

and a sizable fraction of the viewing public consider the most successful Star Wars production

maybe since the original trilogy.

Thank you, yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of material to be compared with, so it's a big thank you.

So you've been frank in the past about not having been an intense Star Wars guy before you got

pulled into this universe and into this work and this project. And I'm wondering if you could

talk a little bit about what that's like, what it's like to come into a story, a franchise. Were you saying to yourself,

I'm going to do something inside a franchise that no one has done before? Or were you saying,

...