Andor actor Kyle Soller: "Star Wars is a beautiful foil or mirror for our own lives  because it’s the rawest stuff we deal with”

The Clash or the Pistols, Marathons or Mars Bars, Adidas or Puma, Coke or Pepsi, Star Trek or Star Wars?

When I was a kid there were lots of tribal choices to be made. For me it was Strummer and the boys, the one with nuts in it, three stripes, the Real Thing and Captain James T. Kirk.

My whelm was therefore seriously undered when in a professional capacity I was asked to watch season one of Andor, the Rogue One prequel created by Tony Gilroy who co-wrote the original film.

Well, knock me down with a blurrg or indeed a porg, the 12-parter turns out to be Breaking Bad, Slow Horses and Severance levels of good.

Its star turns include the Connecticut-born, London-based Kyle Soller who plays Syril Karn, an Imperial Bureau of Standards of the Galactic Empire jobsworth who steals every scene he appears in and – cue Andor in-joke – is to be commended for his light tailoring.

“I was a Star Wars fan and watched The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi with my elder brothers when I was growing up,” Soller tells me when we hook up in London where he lives with his actor wife Phoebe Fox and their young family. “Star Wars was massive then, as were cartoon TV shows like ThunderCats and G.I. Joe, both of which I’d have been glued to back in the States. After coming across some of his standup on YouTube, I became obsessed with Robin Williams. I just loved the way his comedy mind worked and the physicality of it. That led me to Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor whose films I was too young to watch but I watched them anyway!”

(L-R) Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and Dedra Meero (Denise Gough)in Lucasfilm's ANDOR Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Did he want to be a stand-up himself?

“God, no!” Kyle shoots back. “I’m cool with saying somebody else’s words but that would be terrifying! I have much, much respect for the people who do because everything about it has to be spot on.”

Kyle “stumbled into acting” when aged ten he was cajoled into appearing in a school production of The Adventures Of Mr. Toad. Which, curiously enough, I narrated when I was ten in my school.

“A formative experience for both of us!” the 41-year-old laughs. “I remember going off-piste on stage and improvising the role of Toad, which got this really positive reaction from the audience. I was like,

‘Okay, there’s more to acting than just standing still and saying things’. It opened me up to that liminal place of inspiration which can happen.”

I assume that as he milked the Mr. Toad applause, Kyle had no way of knowing it was the first step in the journey which, in 2003, took him to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

“How amazing would it be if I said, ‘Yeah, I wanted to go to RADA since I was 10-years-old’?” he ponders. “That was a surprise born out of a necessity for change. I was at a great college in the States but I wasn’t really happy there. I hadn’t been acting for a while and thought that going to a place like RADA, which has such incredible history, and doing a summer course would break the malaise – which it did. As soon as I got there, the universe was saying, ‘You’re in the right place.’ I took a semester off to work on auditions and then went back to London when RADA said, ‘You’ve got a fulltime place.’ So, yeah, that jumping and taking a risk paid off.”

One of the first people he befriended at RADA was Tom Hughes who, after starring last year alongside Anthony Hopkins in gladiatorial epic Those About To Die, returns to smallish screens next month in season two of Malpractice.

Kyle winces when I mention the flat they shared.

“It was pretty grotty,” he reveals. “At one point there were spiders everywhere. Then the fridge broke down for the twelfth time and we decided ‘This is it’ and did a runner with the two other guys from the class we were living with. I remember the landlady screaming down the phone and threatening to come after us. Fun times!”

Along with acting, Soller and Hughes bonded over a shared love of music.

“My brother and I created a short-lived band called Muchacho which is the Spanish for ‘boy,” he divulges. “I’m sure we found the name at the end of a six-pack of beer. Anyway, we were a psych-folk outfit who released some music which is thankfully very hard to find.”

Kyle gained a new rock ‘n’ roll buddy recently when he shot Death By Lightning, the stranger-than-fiction true story of the 20th US president, James Garfield, and the man who shot him dead, Charles Guiteau.

“The assassin is played by Matthew Macfadyen and the President is Michael Shannon who has his own R.E.M. tribute act which is currently out playing Fables From The Reconstruction. He had some really great band t-shirts that he wore. I’ve a few myself but his were way cooler than mine.

“As soon as I found out from the audition note that Matt Ross and Michael Shannon were involved, I was like, ‘I don’t care what the part is, I want to be directed by Matt and act with Micheal.’ It was a no-brainer.”

Being a goddamn Limey, I know diddlysquat about James Garfield. Is he something of a forgotten president?

“He gets eclipsed by Abraham Lincoln who came not long before him and is way more mythologised in American culture. It was really effecting, though, exploring that post-Civil War period.”

Which still resonates today in Trump’s America.

“Oh, 100%” Soller nods. “The reparations after the Civil War, the policies that were put into place and the domino effect from that schism within the United States remain hugely relevant. I’m watching Taylor Sheridan’s 1883 at the moment, which is another brilliant show about that period.”

Well-received theatrical roles in the likes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Glass Menagerie and Cyrano de Bergerac led to Kyle in 2018 being cast as Eric Glass, the main protagonist in Matthew Lopez’s Howards End-inspired The Inheritance, which clocks in at a whopping seven hours.

“When I was offered the role I never tallied up the amount of time I would have to be on stage,” he admits. “Even if it had been ten hours, I still would have said ‘Yeah’ because I’d never read anything like Matthew’s play before. There was something so special, unique, effecting and moving about it that just doing the audition felt like a gift. I know that sounds really holy or whatever but it’s true.”

A portrait of New York’s gay community shortly after it was ravaged by AIDS, The Inheritance not only earned Soller a Laurence Olivier Best Actor Award but also the chance to appear alongside the legend that is Vanessa Redgrave.

“To have Vanessa’s experience and legacy arrive with her every time she came on stage was really something,” he enthuses. “Creatively, she’s very mercurial and changeable and will go where she wants to. It was amazing how, at her age, she can still be doing what she’s doing. If it felt like we were having a bit of an energy dip in rehearsal, she’d bring it right back up again.

“If somebody mentioned something political, bam, Vanessa was straight on it and would have these very forthright opinions. Wow, man, she’s a force.”

It was shortly after The Inheritance transferred from London to Broadway  – “Going back to where the play was born in Matthew’s mind was really powerful”, he observes – that Soller auditioned for Andor.

“I did the audition in New York and then went over to London for a week to meet the Andor creator Tony Gilroy. I flew back expecting to complete what was left of The Inheritance’s Broadway run but we got shut down by the pandemic.

“I was in two minds at first about the role,” he confesses. “There’d been all these new films and TV shows and I wondered, ‘Have we reached peak Star Wars?’ Then I realised there is no peak with Star Wars –  there’s just this amazing depth of creativity in this universe which keeps going and going and going.

“Once I started talking to Tony about Syril and his arc and he sent me some scripts I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is Star Wars as we’ve never seen it before.’ Yes, it’s a prequel leading up to Rogue One and the very beginnings of the rebellion amidst the expansion and tightening of the grip of the Empire. But it’s also a socio-political commentary, a love story, a thriller, an action movie. It’s got absolutely everything.”

Again, there are Andor characters and plotlines that wouldn’t be out of place in today’s White House.

“You could say that about all the generations of Star Wars. It’s wrestling with themes that we’ve been wrestling with since we started trying to build communities and cities and countries. It’s no surprise that it resonates with the present day because those themes are so personal to our existence.

“Tony, as George Lucas did, has used the run up to World War II as an inspiration for Andor,” Kyle continues. “What was the rise of this movement doing to people? It’s putting ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and forcing them to make decisions about their life or somebody else’s life. ‘Do I exercise good here or exercise bad?’ Star Wars is a beautiful foil or mirror for our own lives  because it’s the rawest stuff we deal with.”

Which is as good a summation of Star Wars as you’re ever going to read.

When did Kyle fully realise the depth and richness of Syril Karn’s character?

“As soon as I started reading about his personal life in the scripts. When you’re given a scene with an overbearing, domineering mother that he still lives with, you’re like, ‘Wow, this is really a side of the Empire we haven’t seen before.’ You never got to meet Darth Vader’s mom in that way!”

Asked what his favourite season one Syril moments are, Soller shoots back, “I really enjoyed him trying to capture Cassian Andor on Ferrix and the interrogation scene with Dedra. Syril’s mom slapping his face and then tearfully embracing him was very powerful, and then there’s the light tailoring which has taken on a life of its own!”

Kyle says he’s been humbled by the fan reaction to Andor.

“I didn’t expect the show to have the amazingly positive impact it’s had,” he admits. “Especially with people who really, really care about the family and legacy of Star Wars. A lot of them are saying it’s either their favourite since the original films or their favourite of alltime, which is mind-blowing.”

Tony Gilroy has said of season two that, “If it doesn’t make you cry, I’ve failed.”

“Man, it’s super-emotional,” Soller confirms. “There are some things that are really shocking. Because it’s the final season and covers four years, it’s jam-packed with really exciting moments leading up to the beginning of Rogue One.”

How’s Syril?

“Great, thank you for asking!” Kyle deadpans. “Syril’s feeling pretty good about himself. He’s moving up through the Bureau of Standards ranks and exploring the newfound power that gives him. He’s got some new tailoring and is also exploring a potential relationship with Dedra whilst trying to individuate himself from his mother. His devotion for the Empire is full-blown but, amidst all those positives, he can’t let go of not being able to capture Cassian. There’s a lot going on.”

Kyle sprouted some serious facial hair in 2023 to play Alfred Hillinghead in Bodies, the time jumping whodunit that also featured Stephen Graham who’s gone on to capture the toxic masculinity zeitgeist with Adolescence.

“Man, he’s just the dude. He cares, he works hard, he’s very funny… Outside of Bodies, Stephen was prepping for A Thousand Blows, so I imagine Adolescence came a little later. To create something that’s so profoundly effecting in hopefully a positive way… wow, what an achievement.”

Going further back, Kyle spent a sizeable chunk of 2015 starring alongside Rob Lowe, Pauline Quirke, Diana Rigg, Megan Mullaly and Derry’s very own Bronagh Gallagher in sci-fi comedy You, Me And The Apocalypse.

“Holy shit… what a voice. I just had the best time with Bronagh. I don’t think I’ve laughed with anyone else as much. She’s amazing.”

Returning to the here and now, the first of two new films that Soller has coming up is Jay Kelly, the Noah Baumbach-directed story of two middle-aged friends trying to recapture their youthful spirit during a chaotic weekend. With Adam Sandler, Hannah Onslow, George Clooney, Eve Hewson, Jim Broadbent, Billy Crudup and Isla Fisher also involved, it might just be his most star-studded project yet.

“I spent my whole time on set pinching myself and trying through osmosis to absorb everything that was happening in the room. It was super-creative, super-interesting and full of fucking great people. I can’t say any more about it at the moment other than that you’re in for a treat.”

There’s even less he can say about Control, which focuses on a troubled doctor who wakes up one morning to the sound of a mysterious voice in his head and also features the talents of James McAvoy, Julianne Moore and Jenna Coleman.

“It was a good year, man!” Kyle concludes with a chuckle. “Again it was a great director in Robert Schwentke and some really funny, lovely people doing good work. You can’t ask for more than that.”