Andorstar Diego Luna reflected upon his experience in Hollywood prior to Star Wars, and his comments inadvertently had major implications for one of the sequel trilogy’s main heroes. Luna’s time in Star Wars, beginning with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and ending with Andor season 2 earlier this year, has been a notable one.
Not only is Rogue One one of only two (currently) major Star Wars movies that are not part of the Skywalker Saga, but also, it’s largely seen as one of Star Wars’ best movies. Likewise, Andor is widely considered one of Star Wars’ best TV shows, if not the single best show overall.
Clearly, Luna had a major hand in some of the most defining Star Wars projects of late, but Star Wars movies and TV shows significantly affected Luna’s career as well. In fact, Diego Luna spoke about his experience in Hollywood before and after landing Star Wars, and his reflections reveal a serious issue with the sequels.
Andor Star Diego Luna Used To Be Typecast Before Rogue One
During a roundtable discussion with multiple actors, hosted by The Hollywood Reporter, Diego Luna spoke about his experiences in Hollywood prior to his role as Cassian Andor and shared that he was frequently typecast as a drug dealer, criminal, or similar character type because he is a Latino actor.
Luna explained, “Before Andor, the only projects I would get offered would be a drug dealer, right? And then I could be the nice drug dealer and not the very vicious one, but still a drug dealer.” There are several examples from Luna’s career prior to Star Wars, such as his role as Gonzalo in the 2012 movie Contraband.
Thankfully, neither Rogue One nor Andor repeated this pattern in Luna’s career, but Luna’s comments do shed light upon the fact that Star Wars did essentially the same thing to a sequel trilogy actor—years after Rogue One was released, in fact.
Star Wars Sadly Failed Poe Dameron In The Rise Of Skywalker
Despite Cassian Andor’s story breaking this pattern of typecasting for Diego Luna, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker gave Poe Dameron actor Oscar Isaac that exact treatment. That is, out of nowhere, in the third sequel trilogy movie, Poe was revealed to have a past as a spice runner.
With spice being the Star Wars galaxy’s equivalent of drugs, this essentially makes Poe an ex-drug dealer himself. This choice was disappointing and bewildering for several reasons. For one, among the biggest issues with the sequel trilogy were the sharp left turns The Rise of Skywalker took narratively because the three movies were so disjointed.
This resulted in problems like Palpatine’s incredibly controversial return, but the revelation that Poe had once run spice was nearly as whiplash-inducing as Palpatine’s resurrection. From a story perspective, there was absolutely no reason for this change (sure, it connected him to Zorii Bliss, but that was another late-stage addition).
Diego Luna Made History In Andor
Although the changes that The Rise of Skywalker made to Poe Dameron’s story remain disappointing and frustrating, this issue was thankfully not repeated with Andor. On the contrary, Diego Luna made Star Wars history in his role as Cassian Andor, leading what is arguably Star Wars’ best TV show of all time.
Both Andor as a show and Cassian as a character have had a massive impact on the franchise and proven that the bar should be so much higher. That success didn’t come from typecasting—quite the opposite. Andor felt revolutionary for Star Wars because of its emotional depth and realism, which allowed Diego Luna to shine in a nuanced role.
