Known for a career full of scene-stealing performances in “Firefly,” “I, Robot,” “Resident Alien,” and countless voice roles, Alan Tudyk, the performer behind K-2SO, has a special place in the “Star Wars” universe. First introduced in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” K-2SO became a fan favorite — a towering, sardonic Imperial droid reprogrammed by Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), equal parts deadly and deadpan in his humorous delivery (“He tends to say whatever comes into his circuits. It’s a byproduct of the reprogram,” Andor explained of the droid’s programming in ‘Rogue One;).
Sparingly, but effectively and carefully employed in season two of Tony Gilroy’s acclaimed series “Andor”—the ‘Rogue One’ prequel show— K-2SO was featured in four episodes, becoming a key figure in the final two episodes — “Who Else Knows?” and “Jedha, Kyber, Erso” — leading directly into the events of ‘Rogue One.’
Tudyk, who earned an Emmy nomination for his guest role on the series, has plenty of stories about playing him, collaborating with Diego Luna, and sneaking in some of the franchise’s funniest moments. We caught up with the actor to talk about the freedom of improvising in “Rogue One,” the tighter scripting of “Andor,” the “horror episode” that never made it to screen, and whether K-2SO’s story might continue elsewhere in the galaxy.
You’ve been doing motion-capture since “I, Robot.” How did that start for you?
It’s through Andy Serkis — you know, he’s taught us so much. He’s been given a platform to educate people about his work for the many projects he’s motion-captured for. My first one was “I, Robot,” and I’ve done many robots since. I jokingly told him, “I’m handling the robot side of things — you take the apes.” I don’t know if he appreciated it, but it was nice.
At that time, I was asked about awards. Andy’s work in “The Lord of the Rings” was being discussed for recognition, and I went to the Hollywood Foreign Press at the Golden Globes to promote “I, Robot” with Will Smith and Bridget Moynahan. They asked me, “Do you think motion-capture artists should be eligible for Oscars?”
I said, “No,” and by their expression, that was not the correct answer.
Huh, why not?
Well, sure — if you watch my performance on the day, in my little suit, and you deem that a valuable performance, it deserves an Oscar. But the reason I said “No” is because it’s not a solo work per se.
When I worked with Diego, especially in “Rogue One,” Gareth Edwards’s directing style was much looser. I’d do the lines as scripted the first couple of takes, and then I was free to do whatever I wanted, because they didn’t see my face. So, I’d do funnier versions or pushed K-2SO’s sarcasm even more.
But then every single line I said had to be re-recorded later. That gives you another opportunity to change the line — to add lost information, to avoid clunky phrasing, or to try new versions of a joke. Sometimes I’d forget which version ended up in the movie, because I remembered my favorites.
Do you have an example?
Yeah — there’s one with Jyn Erso where in the movie I say, “I think it’s a bad idea.” My favorite version of that line was, “No one likes you.” That’s the one I remembered, and I was surprised it wasn’t in the movie [laughs].
Were a lot of your ad-libs kept in “Rogue One”
Yeah, they did keep them. They were open to it. But on “Andor,” it was a lot less — due to the writers’ strike. I started work when the strike began, so the script was more or less set, and you couldn’t really play with it too much on the day.
Although I did change one, K-2SO walks across a bridge to kill everyone and save Cassian. An Imperial says, “Are you with us?” The line was written as, “I am a KX unit. Serial number 5692.” It didn’t seem to do much. So, I just said, “No,” and killed him. That just seemed right. Later, in voiceover, as Tony Gilroy says, you get another bite at the apple, and everyone agreed—it was a committee of people, because nothing is overlooked on that show— that “No” was the right choice.
So, back to what you intimated earlier, why do you think motion capture differs from other acting?
Right, I got off track because of the collaborative nature. You take an actor’s performance and then you change it if needed. When I first talked to Gareth Edwards about “Rogue One,” I thought he just wanted to speak to me for my “I, Robot” experience. I didn’t realize that he was somebody who worked with motion capture in the past and knew all about CGI and VFX. I just thought he wanted my expertise in what it was like to shoot a big action movie with a robot.
He told me, “I’m going to use every little movement you make, every squint.” I told him, “Don’t even say that, man,” because in filmmaking you use anything you can to get your vision out — and if you can manipulate a whole character afterward, you will. Anyhow, he gave me the job [laughs].
K-2SO has become such an iconic character. Could we see him again?
I’d be happy to do it. He’s a clown. I’m a big fan of clowns, you don’t hear that said a lot these days [laughs]— the European Lecoq school — where clowns are like children who’ve never been told “no.” There’s honesty, mischief, petulance… all those enjoyable emotions to play. K-2SO checks a lot of those boxes.
How different was “Rogue One” from its original version?
Oh, as far as the reshoots? Yeah, I never saw the final edit before the reshoots [in the previous version].
The script was changing while we were shooting. It was bizarre, but it’s like that with many big movies and ‘Rogue One’ wasn’t much different. With a lot of big movies, they get all the things in place, and it’s like, “Well, the train is leaving the station,” and the response is like, “Well, the script isn’t quite there,” and it’s like, “We’ll get there.”
It’s a little bit like jumping out of a plane and someone throws all the pieces of a parachute after you and says, “Put it together before you hit the ground, please” [laughs]. And we were doing that. I know many people noticed there were scenes in trailers that didn’t end up in the movie.
One funny example is a clue to the disjointed nature of things that really worked in our favor. We’re in a scene on Jedha, and Diego showed up one day with a busted lip from makeup. And Gareth goes, “What do you have on your lip?” and Diego responds, “This is the scene after I get smacked by that guy.” Gareth said, “Oh, that scene’s gone.” Diego didn’t want to waste the makeup; it took an hour and a half to put it on. He’s like, “Can we just use it? I don’t want to go back.”
And I’m like, “What if K-2SO slaps him?” So we came up with K-2SO hitting him and telling him to be quiet. I added, “Fresh one if you mouth off again,” which made Diego laugh. They put it in the movie, Gareth just said, “Yeah, let’s do that.”
You can see Diego laugh; he covers his face, but you can see a little bit of his smile, which wouldn’t have been there. And I love that moment, right? Had it just been a straight-up film, that would have been lost, so sometimes, it can be a benefit.
So the reshoots helped?
Yes. Tony Gilroy’s rewrites made it more focused — trimming scenes, tightening scenes and focusing the hero’s journey of it all. There’d be a little too much shoe leather in there, or whatever, you know, trim here, trim here. And things like, “if you do one scene that says this thing real quick, we can cut this other scene and save it. It’s too long. It was about tightening it up, but it was always the same in the big picture. We were always going to die, so it didn’t feel like a drastically different movie, but the changes gave each character their own hero moment.
