Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) and her husband Perrin (Alastair Mackenzie) were on their way to a party on episode 6 of Andor’s second season when they saw a familiar face on his way out. But that familiar face to them was not so familiar to Star Wars fans. At least not in the context of Star Wars. That’s because a major franchise character was recast for the new series.
Senator Bail Organa was first referenced in the very first Star Wars movie when A New Hope came out in 1977. Senator Organa was blown to smithereens along with the rest of Alderaan by the Death Star, as Grand Moff Tarkin made Organa’s adopted daughter Leia watch… while her real father, Darth Vader, stood by. We finally got to meet Bail on screen in the prequel movie Attack of the Clones, with veteran L.A. Law and NYPD Blue actor Jimmy Smits inhabiting the role. Smits continued to play Organa in the Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One films as well in the 2022 Obi-Wan Kenobi streaming series and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game.
However, when Bail showed up for this brief Andor scene conversing with Mon and Perrin, it was not Jimmy Smits playing the rebellion hero, but a new (yet recognizable) face — Benjamin Bratt. The recasting was certainly surprising, especially considering Smits played the role in the film on which the prequel series Andor is based, Rogue One. So why wasn’t Smits once again portraying the savvy senator? According to creator Tony Gilroy, it was simply a matter of logistics.
“We couldn’t work it out,” Gilroy tells Entertainment Weekly. “The scheduling didn’t work out. We really tried hard, but he wasn’t available and couldn’t make it.”
This is one of the problems that can crop up when you try to use previously established characters in sequels, prequels, and spinoffs. “Bringing back legacy characters is really complicated,” Gilroy notes. “It’s very expensive. It’s very, who’s working when. A lot of effort went into it, but we just couldn’t work it out scheduling wise.”
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Once they could not land Smits back, team Andor had to move on to plan B — a plan that was hatched by Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. “Kathy had the idea for Benjamin,” Gilroy reveals. “It was just a brilliant idea. He’s a wonderful human being and really eager and beloved on set and really happy about what he does.”
The Andor creator knew a lot of attention would be paid to the recasting, so he hatched the idea to put that introduction in a brief appetizer before serving the main course later. “I put him in episode 6 in an arbitrary way so people will get the conversation out of the way until the next week when he really starts to work.”
Gilroy continues, “It’s one of those situations where I want to do something simple. We don’t do many things that are unnecessary, but it’s like, ‘Let’s get him in here now so people can discuss it for a week and get it out of their system and then he can come back to really work.’ I didn’t want the guy’s work to be confused with his introduction.”
And now that the introduction has been made, we can see what the new Bail Organa has up his spiffy senatorial sleeves.
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