‘I can bring more to it now than I could ever have back then’: Genevieve O’Reilly on reprising Star Wars role

“I think I’m someone who’s always just chipped away. Just kept going, kept working, kept pushing myself. And in chipping away at things, I’ve never fallen into a stereotype. I’ve been able to play different characters, sometimes on screen, sometimes on stage.”

In her home in London, against the background of a bay window, sun streaking through the closed blinds, Genevieve O’Reilly is contemplating the stepping stones that have taken her to all corners of the acting profession — from Shakespeare standards to TV biopics to award-sweeping plays to multibillion franchises and indie films. As much as graft, it appears, the city outside that window played a part. Born in Dublin, where she lived until she was 10, then raised in Adelaide in Australia, she and her chiropractor husband emigrated “for an adventure”. London called, largely because of its thriving TV, film, theatre and performance scene.

“You’re in this melting pot of cultures and writers, dancers, and you can go and see so many different things,” she says, with a Dublin accent that’s gone nowhere. “I came here to dip my toe in and I thought I’d only be here for a couple of years.”

Life had other plans for O’Reilly. Seventeen years later, she’s now settled with two children and this prolific career, known for projects like Jez Butterworth’s multi-award-winning West End and Broadway play The Ferryman (about the family of a missing IRA man in Armagh during the Troubles), the Australian box office success The Dry, and Tin Star, alongside Tim Roth and Christina Hendricks. Chipping away might be putting it mildly.

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Intermittently, she’s reprised the defining role of her career, that of the stoic rebel leader Mon Mothma in the Star Wars franchise. Playing her in Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith was her first role out of drama school, in scenes alongside Natalie Portman, Anthony Daniels and Jimmy Smits. But after the work was done, most of Mothma’s role in the film ended up on the cutting-room floor. Was she disappointed?

“I was probably still glowing from the experience of it when I found out, so it wasn’t terribly disappointing,” she says. “Of course you want to feel vital enough to the piece to make the cut, but it wasn’t surprising they decided to go that way. That film was about Anakin becoming Darth Vader, so even as hopeful as I was, it made complete sense to me. And very kindly, George Lucas and his producer Rick [McCallum] wrote to me beforehand and explained that they were going to cut those scenes. Props to them — that was very respectful towards a young actor.”

Patience, it seems, is a virtue. Decades later, Mon Mothma is finally getting full attention as a key character in Disney+’s new series, Andor. “It’s the pitch that every actor wants to hear: ‘We’re interested in your character. We’d like to develop her’,” says O’Reilly. “And I’m so glad the opportunity to explore her has happened at this point in my career. I think I can bring more to it now than I could ever have back then.”

A prequel to Rogue One that takes place five years before its events, the series “lives within its identity, so it’s gritty, it’s grey”. It tells the back story of rebel hero Cassian Andor, while also uncovering Mon Mothma’s life as a senator within the Imperial Senate before their paths cross.

“We see that perhaps her politics doesn’t align with the political world she’s navigating under the Empire, nor in her home life. Watching Mon Mothma have a fight with her husband is something we’ve never seen before,” O’Reilly says. “So I was interested in what’s it like to be a lonely voice in favour of democracy within an autocracy, but also a lonely voice within your own home.”

That dissent already aligns her with Cassian Andor. “At their core they both want the same thing but they’re fighting in such vitally different worlds. Yet to create an effective rebellion, what you need is people fighting within their own sphere of influence first.”

Though the events weave in nicely to the overarching Star Wars story, Andor is designed to be standalone enough for Star Wars novices. “Sometimes you enter something like this and because you haven’t seen a lot, you assume, or you feel the weight of expectation that everybody seems to know it and you don’t,” says O’Reilly. “But Tony [Gilroy, the showrunner] said his wife wasn’t a Star Wars fan, and he wanted to make it so that she would like it. The story feels like the beginning of something, so it’s a good place to start.”

Far, far away from the galaxies of Lucas’s imagination, O’Reilly’s acting ability was first uncovered with her extended family in Dublin. Growing up, Sunday afternoons were spent with her cousins creating plays, dances and songs to perform in front of the adults. “It still is that way,” she says. “I still go home and people sing and tell stories or recite poetry. Music and song and story are part of every gathering.”

Identifying acting as something of a calling, O’Reilly knew she wanted to pursue it early on. “But there was no one from the industry previous to my generation. There were no aunts or uncles or grandparents in the creative industries. So at the time it was tough for my parents to accept that as a genuine career path.

“I can understand that — it isn’t a straightforward profession. There’s no linear structure to an actor’s life. There’s not really a ladder even to climb. So it is risky and of course my parents just wanted me to be okay.”

They became more accepting when she got into the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, the Australian equivalent of Rada with alumni like Judy Davis, Toni Collette, Cate Blanchett and Mel Gibson. The three years there gave her a chance to trial and error, until she was erroring no more. It was following her small but significant roles in The Matrix and Revenge of the Sith that she left for London, to see how far she could take her acting career.

It speaks volumes that within a week of stepping off the plane on to a new continent, O’Reilly landed both an agent, and a role in Richard II at The Old Vic, produced by the revered Trevor Nunn, after which her steady stream of work followed.

“That was an amazing moment,” she recalls. “To realise it wasn’t all in vain. I wasn’t silly, or chasing something unobtainable. Maybe I had something to offer.”

What we had to do, and what we still have to do as women, is have conversations to the writers in regard to how we explore women

Now well established, she’s enthused that there are more meaningful female characters to play than when she first began. Looking at the last few years alone, a study from Whip Media saw a 39 per cent growth rate in female representation among fan favourites in the United States between 2018 and 2021, a double-digit rise that’s reflected in Europe too.

“What we had to do, and what we still have to do as women, is have conversations to the writers in regard to how we explore women. That’s where we can offer something as actors,” O’Reilly says. “Certainly I was aware of that with the opportunities that I was given as a younger actor. Often you would get characters that are flat on the page, so I tried to stretch those characters as much as I possibly could. I was interested in asking questions, looking for surprises, playing with them.”

Fiona Shaw, who stars in the show as Cassian Andor’s guardian, “is one of my favourite actors of all time and she is someone who has also worked on stage and on screen and who has just wrung every last drop out of the characters she’s been given. She’s definitely been an inspiration for me as an actor growing up. I’m so thrilled to be in something with her.”

O’Reilly’s 17-year roll looks set to continue. In November, she’ll be back donning Mon Mothma’s famous white robe as the second series begins filming. Its 12 episodes will cover the next four years in three-episode blocks, leading right up to the events of Rogue One.

After that, she’s in conversations to work on indie films in Ireland, where much of her extended family still live. “I’d love to go back to Ireland and do some beautiful work there,” she says. “A good little film is like a painting. You want to watch it, then you want to go back and watch it again. I would like to be a part of that storytelling culture, to be a part of that canon.”

Andor is now available on Disney+