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Principal photography on the second season of this critically acclaimed live-action Star Wars series, and Rogue One spin-off, Andor, began towards the tail end of November and though production has taken place primarily at Pinewood Studios in London, the season has started shooting on location in recent weeks.
Just over a week ago, we exclusively broke that the series was filming at the McLaren Technology Centre located in Woking. The location was used in season one for the Coruscant Space Port when Syril Karn strutted though the location as he made his travels to his mothers home following the disastrous events on Ferrix that he led. At the start of this week, Diego Luna and Stellan Skarsgård filmed scenes as Cassian Andor and Luthen Rael outside of the Lloyds Building located in London. Now the production has started to set up shop (literally) at the Barbican Estate, London.
If The Barbican sounds familiar to you it’s because Andor filmed in the area for season one. During the first season, the Barbican was used to film scenes featuring Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dalu) and Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) meeting on Coruscant following the events of Aldhani. Andor has now returned to the Barbican estate where they’re currently in the middle of constructing sets in the area, with an eagle eyed fan spotting a store of some kind being built with aurebesh text on a sign which translates to Samo’s Deli Grocery.
Though not present in the image, the Twitter user mentioned seeing a headless Droid being used outside of the store as some sort of bargain bin. We also sent a man to scope out the area, but by the time he got there the store being built was covered up. However our man of the ground said that gum machines and ‘weird’ drinks were being taken in and out of the newly constructed set. He also saw the crew huddled inside a room at the Barbican estate which was full of tree’s and plants.
Whilst scoping out the latest location, our man on the ground came across an E&E Industries sign – remember E&E Industries is the production company behind Andor and EE signs are often spotted on location. What’s fascinating about this sign is that it detailed what locations of the Barbican estate is being used for filming. Set one is of the Cromwell Highwalk with the exterior of the exhibition halls, set two is the sculpture court overlooking defoe place, set three’s name is hard to work out but it’s another highwalk, and sets four and five are of a garden room (the room full of plants I mentioned) and a conservatory.
It seems as if Andor is re-using some locations used in season one, more specifically Coruscant locations. My advice to readers is to keep an eye on areas used as Coruscant for Andor’s first season as the production may shown up to shoot in those areas once again just as they’ve done for the Barbican and the McLaren Technology Centre.
Andor season two is expected to film until August of this year, and will debut exclusively on Disney+ in the latter half of 2024. My podcast co-host, Nick Mirfakhraee visited the Barbican last year and was a big fan of the location and it’s design. You can see a brief video of Nick’s visit below.
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