Adria Arjona is on the move when we first connect — literally. The last few weeks have been something of a whirlwind for the actress, who’s just wrapped up the final phase of the press tour for Andor Season 2 and is currently heading home from the airport. Once Arjona arrives at her Hollywood Hills home, it takes another moment or two for her to settle in, but as she crosses over the threshold, casually shrugs off her coat, and proceeds to make herself comfortable for our conversation, there’s a wordless invitation in it for me to metaphorically put my feet up and relax, too.

There are no awkward or overly formal introductions, even though we’re technically meeting, albeit over Zoom, for the very first time. Speaking with Arjona is accompanied by the feeling of catching up with an old friend — one who listens intently, answers generously, and welcomes you into her confidence right away. When I reference the fact that Andor’s series finale has just premiered, marking the conclusion of her time in Star Wars along with it, I get the immediate sense that the Disney+ series, which has earned both critical and audience acclaim, has served as a turning point for Arjona in more ways than one.
“With Andor, there was a before and after for me and my career, honestly,” Arjona admits, reflecting on the moment when she landed the role of mechanic Bix Caleen, nearly five years ago. It’s a gift she credits to series creator Tony Gilroy, who cast her without any reservations about adding another Latin American actor to the ensemble alongside her co-star and on-screen love interest, Diego Luna. “That isn’t the most common,” Arjona says, and it’s clear she isn’t just alluding to Star Wars in terms of representation. “Tony just really believed that I was Bix.”
Working on Andor was certainly a learning experience, but it was only the most recent of many lessons Arjona has internalized from those she calls “the best of the best” in her industry — and with each new project, she’s become more confident, not just in seeking out roles that don’t confine her to one label but also asserting her own voice on set. “I’ve been able to be challenged, not only in Andor but also in other roles in my career. I’ve been able to play different women with less fear.”
How Growing Up Around Artists Shaped Arjona’s Creative Instincts

Photography by Yellowbelly for Collider

If there’s any part of her voice that Arjona is less confident about, though, it’s having any ability to carry a tune. Despite growing up on tour with her father, Guatemalan singer-songwriter Ricardo Arjona, and being exposed to a lot of performers along the way, she insists to me that there was never even the slightest possibility of her ending up with a music career. “Oh, girl, that’s because I can’t sing!” Arjona laughs. “I don’t have that gene in me. I wouldn’t shut up if I did.” Nor did she take a page from her mother, Leslie, a former beauty queen, and pursue the pageant circuit. “I definitely wasn’t meant to have an office job,” Arjona adds. “That was never going to happen.”
As a child, Arjona wasn’t initially sure what she wanted to grow up to become, but her parents, both artists themselves, only ever nurtured her imagination, even if it meant her locking herself in her closet and playing pretend. Movies served as a glimpse into potential career paths, like a lawyer or an ice skater, but even the most wildly different films all had one thing in common. “Every movie made me want to be something else or learn a new task,” Arjona says. “One day, my dad was like, ‘I don’t know exactly what you think you’re going to be, but I think you might be an actor.’”

Acting really came in and saved me and taught me how to express myself through what I do.

After her parents divorced when she was 12, Arjona relocated to Miami with her mother, but divulges that the move was “a bit of a culture shock.” Her father, she says, suggested that she get into the arts as a means of coping with the adjustment, from photography classes to piano lessons to the recommendation that would change everything: acting school. By 17, Arjona was living in New York City on her own, working as a waitress while studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. It was a period that allowed her to discover the liberating power of inhabiting different characters, particularly when real life veered into more difficult territory.
“Acting school kind of saved me,” Arjona says. “I had a pretty rough upbringing. There were parts there that were not the happiest, and acting really came in and saved me and taught me how to express myself through what I do.”
Although she doesn’t share her father’s musical talent, Arjona has since discovered the hidden link that connects her on-screen roles to his songwriting: a fondness for telling stories. “It’s something that we share very, very deeply. He tells stories through his music and his lyrics, and I get to do that with characters.”
The Real Reason Arjona Chooses Her Roles So Carefully

Photography by Yellowbelly for Collider

While Arjona still compares acting to playing pretend for a living, each new project is a bigger opportunity for more learning. Although she landed early roles in TV shows like Person of Interest, True Detective, and NBC’s short-lived Oz adaptation Emerald City, as well as films like Pacific Rim Uprising and Sweet Girl (the latter of which she starred in alongside now-partner Jason Momoa), Arjona realized that she didn’t want to be put in the box that’s so often reserved for Latin American actresses — whether it be the feisty girlfriend or the tough-as-nails action heroine.
“Every job you take, you’re telling a story to the world of the kind of artist that you are, so you have to stick to your guns and be really truthful to what you believe in,” Arjona says, when I ask her about the types of roles that are being offered to her now in the wake of Andor. “It’s mostly, also, for me, to not be bored, right? To play different characters and to show the world that I’m more than just one thing.”
Richard Linklater’s Hit Man was one of a series of breakout roles that put Arjona on the map in terms of mainstream attention. It was also a bigger opportunity to challenge tired stereotypes — not just through her character, Madison, who becomes romantically involved with Glen Powell’s atypical killer-for-hire, but the crime genre itself. Developing the story was an open and collaborative process between Arjona, Linklater (whom she fondly refers to as “Rick”), and Powell, himself a co-writer on the film’s script, from the moment she was cast.

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‘Hit Man’s Glen Powell and Adria Arjona Had Instant Chemistry, Says Director

“Knowing Glen and then getting to know her, I was like, ‘Okay, this is gonna work.'”

After joining production so early on in the process, Arjona jumped at the opportunity to participate in shaping and developing her character from the ground up. “Rick really wanted to show the world that the idea of a hitman only existed in movies, and I liked the idea that femme fatales also only exist in movies.” That philosophy became the foundation for Madison’s story arc, Arjona says, as well as what helped her crack the code to play her character as someone vulnerable, playful, and yes, very sexy, but also very real. “We’re both women here,” Arjona adds, leaning forward with a simultaneously conspiratorial and commiserating look in her eye. “We’re not all Sharon Stone, you know? That doesn’t exist.”
Once Hit Man premiered on Netflix, audiences were sitting up and taking notice of Arjona’s undeniable screen presence, while she, in turn, was absorbing yet another lesson courtesy of her role in Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, Blink Twice. The actress confesses that she had a difficult time, in the beginning, stepping into the shoes of “bitchy” reality TV star Sarah, who’s among the guests that tech billionaire Slater King, played by Channing Tatum, invites to his private island. “I surround myself with women. I love women. I’m a girl’s girl at heart, and it was really challenging to be mean to Naomi [Ackie],” Arjona says — but she was also open to Kravitz pushing her through several takes to reach brand-new territory. “She was able to guide me through something that I had never really done before.”
In terms of future projects, Arjona always wants to keep learning and growing as an actress, but she also reveals which questions she always weighs in her mind whenever she’s considering a new role: “Who am I playing? Who am I spending time with? Do I feel listened to and heard? Do I want to go and give it all for this character?” After watching her over the past several years in Andor, no one should have any doubts that the actress is willing to do exactly that in bringing a character to life.
The Subtle Strength Behind Bix’s Journey in ‘Andor’

Despite Arjona’s collaborations with the likes of Linklater and Adam Wingard, whose upcoming horror-thriller film Onslaught she just wrapped up, the actress is quick to correct my presumption that her time with Gilroy on Andor was a similar experience, with a hasty apology for interrupting my train of thought. The reason for that, she reveals, is because everything she ever needed to play Bix Caleen, a mechanic and black-market dealer we first meet on Cassian Andor’s home planet of Ferrix, was already on the page when filming began in November 2020. “What he gives you,” Arjona emphasizes about Gilroy, “is complete ownership over your character.” Alongside everyone working in departments from production design to directing to costumes, she likens the process of making the Disney+ series to a machine — one that runs pretty perfectly. “Everyone, before Andor, ran a department or was an employee before this show, and now they’re all bosses. It makes you feel like that, too,” she adds.
Through working with Gilroy in particular, Arjona also felt that she was a trusted steward of her character once she stepped into Bix’s shoes, even when Andor’s creator wasn’t physically present during filming. “He’s the boss, but isn’t on set. He’s like, ‘Hey, you know this character better than anybody, so when you go on set, it is up to you to make sure that this character is being portrayed the way that me and you want.’”
That trust between creator and actor proved invaluable over the course of filming the character’s journey in Andor Season 1, which culminates in Bix’s capture and interrogation at the direction of Imperial Security Bureau supervisor Dedra Meero, played by Denise Gough, and a doctor named Gorst (Joshua James) who specializes in a unique form of torture. We don’t need to hear the sounds of Dizonites being massacred to grasp how horrific it must be for Bix; once the headset goes on, Arjona’s look of pure terror, followed by an absolutely anguished scream, tells us everything we need to know. Yet while Bix is ultimately rescued from her captors when Cassian Andor returns to Ferrix in the finale, the lingering effects from her torment carry through into the second season, manifesting through nightmares, sleepwalking, and ultimately insomnia. For Arjona, it was an opportunity to tell an honest story about the long-term effects of PTSD, even though some viewers may have been frustrated to find Bix still laid low by her past.
“It doesn’t take two months to get over something,” Arjona points out when I bring up where Andor Season 2 picks up with her character. “It takes time and it takes work. So, to meet her a year later and her still having these nightmares, to me, felt really truthful. It felt right. It felt like the right amount of time. And it continues to linger for another two years, and that also feels right. It’s frustrating, but that’s the reality of trauma and how heartbreaking it is, that someone else has so much control and can have so much power over somebody, destroying somebody so strong and so beautiful like Bix. To be able to showcase that was really important to me — to be able to showcase that trauma is incredibly frustrating, and it takes time.”
Despite her character’s visible mental and emotional struggles in Season 2, Arjona doesn’t see Bix as a victim, considering the lengths she goes to in order to leave the past behind rather than allowing her trauma to define her. “She’s fierce. She’s facing it. She’s trying so hard to be a part of the Rebellion. I actually admire Bix a lot. I think she holds a lot of dignity.”
Fighting Back Against the Darkest Side of the Galaxy in ‘Andor’ Season 2

Photography by Yellowbelly for Collider

Knowing the course of her character’s arc in Andor early on, via conversations with Gilroy, was certainly helpful. Arjona says that she never wanted to make drastic changes to any scripts she was given — “I would be ruining it” — but she does confess to one particular request during the filming of Season 2’s third episode. As an undocumented worker on the agricultural planet Mina-Rau, alongside other Rebel allies living in secret, Bix finds herself in the crosshairs of an Imperial lieutenant named Krole, who’s performing a required audit of local farmers. By the time Krole corners Bix alone at home, believing he can blackmail her with his knowledge of her illegal status, the encounter soon turns violent, with Krole attempting to rape Bix, while she, in turn, refuses to go down, or relinquish her bodily autonomy to the Empire once again, without a fight.
Arjona now reveals that she asked for an adjustment to the moment where Bix slaps Krole across the face, likely suspecting his true intentions in tracking her down. “I just wanted to backslap him. That was my one request: ‘I must backslap him.’ There was something kind of animalistic and instinctual to a backslap. It felt kind of disrespectful, as opposed to just a little slap. And that’s all I had to say.”
The change was made right then and there, but the scene itself, which culminates in Bix killing Krole after their intense struggle, became part of a larger milestone, not just for Andor but Star Wars itself. As far as Arjona is concerned, the abuse of power in a galaxy far, far away is nothing new, especially when taking into account some of the franchise’s more infamous moments, like Carrie Fisher’s Leia Organa being forced into a bikini at the whims of the corrupt gangster Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi. Yet it was still a surprise when Arjona realized that Bix was directly naming her experience for what it was as she first read through the scene and its aftermath in Gilroy’s script.

To be able to say it felt incredibly truthful, because that’s exactly what he was trying to do. Why call it anything else?

“I stared and lingered at that line — ‘He tried to rape me’ — for a really long time, because I was not expecting it,” Arjona tells me. “But I was also so honored that I was the one who was getting be able to say it.” Ahead of filming, she also reached out to several loved ones closest to her who’d had similar experiences, learning their stories and getting their perspective on how things would be depicted onscreen. “I had all this ammunition to react the way that Bix reacted in that moment with rage. She was not going to give up, and she was not going to give a second to this guy to touch her.”
When it came time to film the scene, which was shot over several days, Arjona says she only ever felt protected on-set by the crew, as well as empowered by the real-life voices she wanted to represent, in a sequence that ultimately became much bigger than her alone: “I held a lot of people throughout that scene.” While she acknowledges that the moment has led to some controversy in terms of heated discourse online since its airing, she’s as honest in her feelings about it as she has been at any other point in our conversation today: “To be able to say it felt incredibly truthful, because that’s exactly what he was trying to do. Why call it anything else?”
Bix and Cassian’s Romance Is Their Form of Rebellion in ‘Andor’

Image via Disney+

It’d be dishonest, however, to claim that Bix’s storyline in Andor has only lived in the shadows; alongside some of the most emotionally heavy work that Arjona has ever performed lies her character’s epic, ultimately bittersweet romance with the show’s titular character, played by Diego Luna. For Arjona, who had never filmed a second season of any TV series before, getting more time to build and develop her onscreen connection with Luna made all the difference.
“With Diego, we got the opportunity to work together again, and this time to create this beautiful love story,” Arjona says, with the same note of fondness she seems to reserve for all of her favorite collaborators. “I trust Diego blindly. He is our fearless leader throughout this show. He is probably one of the most generous actors I’ve ever worked with.” That trust behind the scenes, as well as Luna’s role as a producer on the show, helped to serve as the foundation for what they created together in Season 2. Even though Bix and Cassian are navigating the highest highs and the lowest lows of their relationship, Arjona says her real-life friendship with Luna made it easy to go to some incredibly tough places with their characters.
After Cassian is tasked with an undercover mission to Ghorman, a planet the Empire is targeting for its rare materials, he and Bix spend an emotional night together before he departs. The moment that ensues is as intimate as any love scene, but sans any removal of clothing or explicit nudity — it’s only Bix and Cassian, performing an intricate dance with their hands, in the privacy of their Coruscant safehouse, backlit by the planet’s cityscape. Although Gilroy hired a choreographer to assist them, it was ultimately left up to Arjona and Luna to come up with the beats of the scene.
“Diego started doing this, naturally,” Arjona says, proceeding to gesture with her own hands in a demonstration of her co-star’s initiation, “and I just followed along. All of a sudden, we’re in this beautiful ritual. There was a sense that these characters have been doing this ritual since they were kids. There’s something very Ferrixian about it — it’s very ancient — and also, so loving about these two characters performing this.”

I felt really lucky that we got to explore these two characters falling in love in the middle of chaos.

That ritual, with all the important weight and history of their characters’ relationship behind it, also perfectly sums up Arjona’s experience of working with Luna throughout Andor’s two seasons. “Every time I had a scene with Diego, I was so excited because I knew it was always going to go well, and I always knew that he had my back. Diego always has my back. Just like Cassian always has Bix’s back, Diego always has my back. I felt really lucky that we got to explore these two characters falling in love in the middle of chaos.”
Unfortunately for Bix and Cassian, that chaos is all part of a larger threat within the Star Wars galaxy, and it starts to have an increasing effect on their happiness. While both characters have become definitive pieces of the rebellion against the Empire toward the end of Andor, living on the moon base of Yavin IV, Cassian is visibly wrestling with whether or not he wants to keep fighting. Running from it all in favor of a peaceful existence with Bix is starting to look like a much more appealing alternative — which is why Bix has to be the one who makes the more selfless, albeit incredibly painful, decision for both of them, leaving Yavin IV in the middle of the night after filming a video message imploring Cassian to continue the fight. Given the timing of it all, I had to ask Arjona whether Bix knows something Cassian doesn’t before she departs.
“Yeah, I think she knows,” Arjona confirms, referring to Bix’s secret awareness of her pregnancy during Episode 9. “I think she knows when she’s making the letter.” She’s only willing to validate that fan theory, however, because she herself learned the truth directly from Gilroy. “The only reason why I’m actually really confirming it is because I heard Tony say yes. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.” An encounter with a Force healer on the Rebel base, in which Arjona’s hand hovers around her stomach, seems to allude to Bix’s pregnancy early on, but if you ask Arjona, it’s actually the scene prior, in which Cassian insists he’s done with it all, that’s more revealing.
“She sees Cassian going the other route. She’s like, ‘I can’t be the reason that he doesn’t get to do what he’s destined to do.’ Especially if she tells him that she’s pregnant, Cassian will quit it all. Cassian is willing to give up everything for Bix, and Bix knows that. That’s how important Bix is for Cassian. It’s a big sacrifice that she makes, a big love sacrifice not only for what’s best for Cassian, but also for what’s best for the rebellion. She says it: ‘I choose rebellion.’ But ultimately, she’s choosing the future of her family and the future of the galaxy that she’s going to raise this child in. It’s a big mother instinct that kicks in. I don’t know how she would have made that decision otherwise.”
‘Andor’s Very Last Scene Has “A Beautiful Element of Hope” for Arjona

Photography by Yellowbelly for Collider

Of course, there’s a difference between theory and confirmation, and the very last scene of Andor Season 2 couldn’t be clearer in explaining why Bix made the choice she did. Her whereabouts have been unknown even to Cassian, likely to ensure she remains safe and protected from the ongoing threat of the Empire, but the series finale’s montage, which confirms the whereabouts of nearly every character we’ve followed from the beginning, picks up with Bix back on Mina-Rau, walking through a wheat field — and carrying her and Cassian’s infant in her arms. Brandon Roberts’ orchestral score diminishes to a soft, plaintive refrain, and the scene itself is empty of dialogue, apart from Bix’s soft murmur to soothe her baby’s fussing. This is the peaceful existence that they always dreamed of having, but as those who know the ending of Rogue One are more than aware, Cassian won’t have the chance to reunite with her. His noble sacrifice on Scarif — which plays out in a matter of days, timeline-wise — means that he’ll never know he was, to paraphrase Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael, fighting for a sunrise that his child now gets to see.
The significance of the scene isn’t lost on Arjona, who adores both of the Star Wars films that follow it and had to set aside her own fandom to deliver a moment in which Bix has no awareness of what’s ultimately at stake. “I had to step away from my love of Rogue One and A New Hope to really be able to play the letter and to be able to play the last shot, because I was a little too connected, and Bix obviously isn’t.” As for the look on Bix’s face while she’s looking to the horizon, Arjona has a read on that as well: “There’s a beautiful element of hope in that last scene. She says it in her letter: ‘When this is over, when it’s all done, we’ll meet again, and we’ll be fine.’ She has never had a doubt that Cassian will be back. There’s a lot of hope in that last shot that he’ll be back and they’ll raise a family. I think that’s what’s so heartbreaking about it.”
Viewers who watched Andor’s series finale live had the crushing realization of that heartbreaking truth in real time, but Arjona knew how Bix’s story would ultimately end well in advance, thanks to Gilroy divulging the details. “When he told me that the last shot of Season 2 was going to be me holding Cassian’s baby, it just blew my mind, because he told me something very similar at the beginning of Season 1. He was like, ‘Don’t worry, it’s all going to pay off.’ That’s something that a lot of creatives promise to get the cast that they desire, but never actually follow through on, and Tony actually followed through and gave me a lot of very pivotal moments in this season, and then gave me the end.”
As it happens, the experience of filming the very last shot of Andor was as tranquil as the final result appears, according to Arjona — right down to working with twin babies, just in case one of them wasn’t feeling all that quiet when director Alonso Ruizpalacios called action. The mood was so relaxed, however, that they were then dealing with the exact opposite problem on set. “It was hard for the baby to stay awake a little bit,” Arjona says, with a chuckle. “We were just really peaceful. The set was quite quiet. There was wind and stuff, but everyone knew that this was a very important moment for our show, so it was a very peaceful, sort of calming day.”
The final shot of Andor, however, wasn’t Arjona’s final day on set. Given that TV production is rarely a linear affair, with episodes and even seasons filmed out of order, that moment in the field was followed up by a much more unexpected shot: “The last day was me working in the silos and looking up and realizing that there were Imperial ships coming in.” It also turned out to be a perfect instance of symmetry for Arjona and her biggest scene partner, the person who’d had her back from the beginning of filming.

She has never had a doubt that Cassian will be back. There’s a lot of hope in that last shot.

“Diego and I were both on two different soundstages, so we wrapped the exact same day, the exact same moment,” Arjona shares. “Who I began the show with, I ended the show with.” Gilroy, who wasn’t always known for being on set, by her recollection, was also there for her final scene. The rarity of such a moment isn’t lost on Arjona, either. “Sometimes you wrap and your co-star is off doing something else, or they’re off that day, but this time we all wrapped, and we wrapped everyone together. The whole show wrapped together. The last day that I shot was the last day of Andor Season 2, so it was pretty special.”
Yet Arjona admits that letting go of the Star Wars series since filming wrapped in February 2024 hasn’t been an instantaneous process. “It lingered prior, and it also lingered afterwards. There were a lot of tears, and I didn’t want to take the costume off. The idea that you’re not going to visit that character again — and it’s a character that has been really important for me — was really heartbreaking.” After filming, she had to go back into the studio to re-record some of her dialogue in post-production — a process that’s known as ADR, or Automatic Dialogue Replacement — and now, she’s been revisiting the entirety of her experience via countless interviews for Season 2. “I’ve been reminiscing, and I still do.” Given she’s had to refrain from spilling too many details about Bix’s fate in advance, it’s a refreshing change of pace, she adds, to be able to dive deep into spoilers with someone.
Even if her time on Andor is officially done for the moment, Arjona’s still eager to learn from those she built connections with on set — including Gilroy, whom she reveals has become something of a career mentor for her in the wake of their collaboration. “I could text him right now, and in five minutes, I’ll get a response,” she says. “I’m so lucky that I can call him and be like, ‘Hey, Tony, should I do this job? Should I not do this job?’ And he’s like, ‘Walk me through it. Who’s writing?’”
Beyond the important relationships that make it impossible for Arjona to fully say farewell to a galaxy far, far away, moments like being on the receiving end of an overwhelmingly positive response from fans firsthand, at this year’s Star Wars Celebration, may be the closest she’ll ever come to following in her father’s footsteps after all. “I started crying in the middle, being on top of the stage,” she admits. “As actors, you don’t get to feel the community that you’re a part of. My dad steps out on stage and… 20,000 people go see him and tell him, ‘We love what you do.’ I don’t get to feel that unless you’re in Star Wars, unless you’re in one of these big franchises.”
That rare type of immediate feedback from the audience also reaffirms, for Arjona, why the message of Andor is so deeply important, and may even represent the ultimate lesson from her time on the series. I’m struck, too, by the sudden feeling that I’m helping Arjona close the book on this particular chapter of her career by giving her the space to finally talk about all of it.
“This show is about community. It’s about people coming together to make a difference,” Arjona tells me. “Then you’re on stage and you’re like, ‘I am a part of a community. Star Wars is a community. We’re uniting people through all these different shows, not only Andor.’ I get goosebumps talking about it. Star Wars is huge, and it means so much to so many people, and it’s exactly what we were trying to say in this show, which is quite poetic and beautiful.”
Andor is now streaming on Disney+.
​​Photography: Matthew Scott for Yellowbelly | Hair: Jennifer Yepez | Makeup: Shayna Gold | Styling: Sandra Amador | Location: Midtown, NY

Andor

Release Date

2022 – 2025-00-00

Network

Disney+

Showrunner

Tony Gilroy

Directors

Susanna White

Writers

Dan Gilroy