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Genevieve O’Reilly is best known to STARBURST readers for for her role as Mon Mothma, beginning from REVENGE OF THE SITH  and more recently in the second and final season of ANDOR, the Star Wars™ series on Disney+. Andor serves as a prequel to ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS™ STORY, where Genevieve was last seen as the political leader of the Rebel Alliance. She also recently helped promote the STAR WARS™: UNLIMITED TRADING CARD GAME.

Genevieve will next star in Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of MY BRILLIANT CAREER, based on Miles Franklin’s landmark 1901 Australian novel. We caught up with her to find out more about working in the Galaxy’s greatest franchise, as well as the wonderful world of card games.

You’re probably best known to Star Wars™ fans for Star Wars™: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Andor, and Rogue One: A Star Wars™ Story, but you’ve also appeared in a wide range of sci-fi and fantasy projects. Can you tell us about your first role in the genre and how that came about?

I was just starting out as an actor when I auditioned for a young Mon Mothma in George Lucas’ Revenge of the Sith. I didn’t think much about genre. It was the character, the woman I was interested in. I loved the idea of quietly confident female leaders in high level secret meetings. Senators, politicians, leaders risking the unknown to gather together to voice dissent about a brutal leader. I had grown up with stories of Irish people, who for hundreds of years were meeting secretly to give voice in opposition to their oppression under a cruel empire. So although there were lavish costumes and swathes of blue screens, the story felt very human to me.

What is it that continues to draw you back to these worlds?
I really value genre pieces. That under the guise of wildly creative worlds, extra terrestrial creatures, customs and cultures we can examine our own humanity.

How does it feel to be part of the Star Wars™ universe?
I feel terribly honoured to be a tiny part of a huge story, an immensely valuable cultural tale that is Star Wars™.

Mon Mothma has become such an iconic figure within Star Wars. At what point did you realise that you would always be the Mon Mothma for fans?
I am so grateful for the beautiful accident it was that somehow it was me who got to step into Caroline’s shoes. I had always wanted to do her and George Lucas (because he was the one that cast me as Mon) and the fans proud. I was hopeful that in Andor we could really elevate not just her presence but her emotional and intellectual weight and value to the idea of that iconic Star Wars™ rebellion. Tony Gilroy provided the space and story for Mon to shine.  I just took the flag and waved it.

Was there a particular moment where you really felt how deeply audiences had connected with your portrayal? 
Last year I went to my first convention in Liverpool. I met fans from all over the world. They shared with me just how much Mon and particularly her journey in Andor meant to them. They told me of personal struggles of their own and how much her voice meant to them -particularly Mon’s speech from Season 2. I was deeply moved and touched that people shared their stories with me and I think I understood that day for the first time how much she meant to them.

Any memorable fan encounters which may have consolidated this?
Hilariously, I’ve had a number of people come up to me on the tube in London to ask me about the dance sequence at Leida’s wedding. It’s such a fun thing to chat about. People love that she got to go wild on the dance floor!

You’ve recently stepped into the world of tabletop gaming through Star Wars™: Unlimited Trading Card Game. Tell us a bit about your first experience of the game?
Look there’s no sugar coating this. I was rubbish!!   I grew up loving playing games with my family and now with my kids we play games almost every week. So when I was contacted and told that Mon was in a Star Wars™Card Game and would I like to come and play I quite literally jumped with joy. But this, my friends, is a game on another level! It is so wonderfully multifaceted! I was sent the game and I sat down on a Sunday eve to play it with my kids. We had no idea what was going on. It was so funny. My little boy suggested we go on YouTube to find a tutorial. Genius idea! But I was still rubbish at it, so I needed some serious tutors.

How did you build on your knowledge of the game?
Krishiv and Hannah who I met at the Disney event were super fun and so so patient with me. They talked me through the world of the game the strategies, the play. They were brilliant. And because it is Star Wars™, they were obviously the Jedis and I was a mere Padawan.

What have you discovered about the game, or even about yourself, through playing? That in the gaming world I’m probably only good for comedy value, and that I definitely need to hook up with Krishiv and Hannah before playing again!

A big part of Star Wars™: Unlimited Trading Card Game is how it brings fans together to share stories and experiences. Tell us about your recent experience meeting players and fans.

My lasting memory of my day at Disney with the Star Wars™: Unlimited players is the sense of camaraderie and community that I witnessed and got to share in. People from all over the country, from different walks of life, each at very different levels of the game gathering to sit and chat and play. It was a wonderful, generous spirited atmosphere.

What was it like to hear directly from players about what Star Wars™: Unlimited Trading Card Game means to them?
Some of the people I met had been playing the game for a long time and collected many different cards over the years and had sophisticated game strategies. Some were professional players. There was a really cool team of 4 friends who were off to Europe to compete in an international competition together. Others were newer to the game and were building confidence.  It was a really positive, encouraging and inclusive environment –  I found the day and the people I met genuinely inspiring.

Any stand out conversations or fan stories that stayed with you?
It was super cool that there were people I could fan out over the art work of the cards with. I am a sucker for beautiful character art and illustrations. And that is a huge part of Star Wars™ culture and history. So a couple of people showed me some older cards that I hadn’t seen before with stunning illustrations. So cool.

How did it feel to connect with fans in a more intimate, face-to-face setting through the game?
I could be wrong here, but my experience of that day was that the game allowed for a more intimate expression of Star Wars™ fandom and game playing than say, a convention. There was an intimacy to the conversations between people and expression which felt different.

You have a real gift for playing composed, authoritative characters. How much fun is it to step into those roles? 
That’s kind of you to say.  I have had the good  fortune of playing women with very different lives, but Mon is definitely the most authoritative and composed.  And she is extraordinary to play because she has to hold so much within her. She is so different to me. I come from a very simple background and a quiet history. I loved exploring all the tradition and the political world she has to navigate.  There were so many layers to her. I don’t think we got to them all.

What do you enjoy most about embodying those kinds of characters?
I love having a character that has secrets. I’ll often invent a secret for characters I play. But Mon is a warren of secrets held. She felt like a time bomb at times.

Finally, looking beyond Star Wars™, is there a genre project (TV, film, or even stage) that you’d love to take on next?

My daughter loves reading fantasy novels. She’s been obsessed with the Throne of Glass and Fourth Wing books. So if they ever get made, I’ll have to pitch hard to be a part of them.

Any genres or formats you haven’t explored yet but would like to?
I mean, a musical would be fun!

What kind of character would feel like a new challenge or departure for you?
I’d love to play a villain. That would be so much fun!

You can pick up  STAR WARS™: UNLIMITED TRADING CARD GAME today.  MY BRILLIANT CAREER comes to Netflix later this year.

Charles Ardai is probably best known for creating Hard Case Crime, a retro-styled line of crime novels that revives the look of the pulp fiction of the 1940s and 50s, and GUN HONEY and HEAT SEEKER, a pair of sexy action thriller comics inspired by James Bond and Modesty Blaise.  We caught up with them to find out more about their new book, Heat Seeker : Exposed. 

How would you pitch Heat Seeker to someone who thinks a hardboiled detective is a kind of candy?

HEAT SEEKER is the story of a very beautiful female criminal who, for a price, will help you disappear if you’ve been marked for death. She uses elaborate techniques of deception to get you out of danger, taking all the heat onto herself. She’s reckless, a thrill-seeker, and her high-octane adventures find her constantly on the edge of disaster – like a cross between the Now You See Me heist movies and Mission Impossible.

And how would you pitch it to a fan of the Maltese Falcon?

Dahlia Racers, a gorgeous femme fatale who lies for a living, threads her way through a web of fellow criminals, persistent cops, dirty reporters, and shadowy European conspirators, trying to turn a dishonest buck while risking her life at every turn.

What’s your personal favourite thing about the hardboiled genre?

I love the atmosphere, the cynical voices, the way there are no good guys, only varying shades of gray; I love the twists and betrayals, and the velocity at which the stories race forward, leaving you breathless. A good hardboiled novel really is like a movie, just one that plays in your head.

If you could have coffee with any one character from your novels, who would it be and why?

From my novels? Probably Susan Feuer, the former stripper turned private eye in the books LITTLE GIRL LOST and SONGS OF INNOCENCE that I wrote under the pen name “Richard Aleas.” She’s whip smart and can see through all your bullshit, but she’s fiercely loyal and cares about the people in her life. She’d be an awfully good friend to have in your corner in a crisis. Now, if I could have coffee with someone from one of my comics it would be pretty hard to turn down a date with Dahlia Racers from HEAT SEEKER.

And which character really needs to calm down?

Dahlia. When she’s not leaping out of a crashing plane without a parachute or from the top of one racing New York City subway car to another, she’s getting into gunfights on nude beaches – all exciting stuff, to be sure, but damn, this lady needs a nice cup of tea and some Me Time on the sofa.

How long does it take you to get to a first draft?

Pulp writers don’t know from “first” drafts. There’s only one draft – the words go straight from your brain to your typewriter to the printer’s press and on to the spinner rack in your neighborhood drugstore. And you write that one draft in a white heat. I wrote my fastest book in just 27 days. My longest, FIFTY-TO-ONE, probably took three months.

What’s your favourite funny thing about the genre?

How so many people stubbornly refuse to take it seriously. Sure, crime novels are fun, they’re entertainment, no question – but the best of them ask tough questions and cast a bitter lens on the world we live in, and they’ll break your heart as well as any Pulitzer winner. Hell, THE GREAT GATSBY is a crime novel. OF MICE AND MEN is pure noir. But those books get taught in schools, and Raymond Chandler’s THE BIG SLEEP and THE LONG GOODBYE don’t, and why not? It’s funny when you think about it. Not funny ha-ha, though.

What does the first day working on a book like this look like compared to the last day?

The first day? Desperation. The last day? Relief. “Can I do this…?” “I can’t possibly do this.” “Dear god, I did it.”

Doctor Who or Doctor No?

I grew up on science fiction (Tom Baker was my Doctor), but I also grew up watching James Bond movies and film noir on TV, and in the end it was Bond and Bogie that won my heart. So I have to give the edge to Dr. No.

Murder on the Orient Express or Death on the Nile?

I’m more a train guy than a boat guy, plus that twist – that brilliant, brilliant twist! Orient Express all the way.

Truth or Beauty?

It’s a false dichotomy. Read your Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Or as Star Trek asked, “Is There in Truth no Beauty?”  They’re a pair, friend, conjoined twins, and you get ’em both or you get neither. Beauty may be the bally that lures you behind the curtain, but truth is waiting there with a club to knock you cold and pick your pockets. All you can hope is that there’s a smile on your face when you go down.

Heat Seeker : Exposed can be pre-ordered here. 

Rob Jones has written comic books such as Griff Gristle, Paperbacks and Inkstains. He is the co-writer and letterer of the upcoming Titan Comics Original Graphic Novel War of the Worlds: Thunder Child.  We caught up with him to find out more.

How would you pitch this to someone who loves the Jeff Wayne version?
I grew up exposed to the Jeff Wayne version from being a young kid in 90s Lowestoft. I would listen to my late father’s L.P, and pour over the incredible artwork in the album sleeves by Geoff Taylor, Mike Trim, and Peter Goodfellow. The song was the standout piece for me on that album, so when coming to read the novel and finding out that the Thunder Child’s involvement in the story is very minimal always got me wondering – “What happened to the crew of that ship? What did they go through before the Martian’s melted their valiant hearts?”. So, my pitch would be, if you loved the musical version, we have a story here that compliments the one that Jeff Wayne, and all the artists involved when the album was originally released and those who came after, delivered, made with genuine love and care for the original text, but you don’t need to be familiar with that to enjoy it. Pop on the album, sit back and follow our crew through to their fateful end.

Why Thunderchild?
The answer to this should be “Why has there NOT been a Thunder Child comic?” The book sets it up as the last stand of humanity, the moment when all hope seems lost. Then that, coupled with Jeff Wayne’s incredible musical version, really hammers home that this ship, its crew, made the noble sacrifice to ensure others could survive. It’s pretty confusing to me that no one in comics has ever felt the need to explore this concept. So, we decided to tell our own story, set to the backdrop of
Wells’ novel, about the crew onboard that obsolete, vastly outgunned and outmatched vessel, and make you care about our cadre of characters as they barrelled towards their fateful showdown with the Martian invaders.

What’s your personal favourite about War of the Worlds?
The themes that Wells’ explored in the novel. This idea that there is something out there that is just exponentially more powerful than we are, that they view us with disdain and set out to destroy us without thinking about perhaps the natural consequences of their actions. It’s reflective in the imperialism of the time that the novel was written, this idea of superiority over the unknown and how those with bigger sticks and larger rocks always attempt to crush those they see as beneath them, and how at the darkest of times, those who seek to control and destroy are offset and thwarted by something which may seem inconsequential. That, and the GIANT MARTIAN HEAT-RAY FIRING DEATH MACHINES! The Tripods are iconic. I do love some solid sci-fi vehicles.

What’s your favourite thing about this book?
I assume “Everything” is a cop-out answer, yes? So, my honest answer would be just having had the opportunity to make it. Working with Matt is always amazing (We’ve known each other for years and have worked on multiple indie projects together in many capacities), having Kevin Castaniero onboard as artist and Simon Gough on colours really rounded out the concept and idea. Kevin’s art is beautiful, both intricate and emotional in all the right places, and simultaneously devastating and overwhelming in all the action set pieces. Coupled with Simon’s beautiful colour work, it really does hammer home the story we wished to tell. So being able to tell it through to the conclusion with this team is probably my absolute favourite thing about this book.
And, on a personal note, it was the first comic project that my father was genuinely enthused about me doing. He was the first person to read the first issue/third of the book, and really loved it. Unfortunately he passed away suddenly before we completed the book, so my favourite thing about this book is the connection to my dad and his excitement at something I was working on.

If you could have coffee with any one character from Thunder Child who would it be and why?
For me, it would have to be Miriam Young. If she was a real person, she would have been one of the first suffragettes for sure. She’s well read, open to ideas, forward thinking and yet, capable of understanding two sides of an argument and attempting to find a compromise. I think she would be a fantastic person to sit and have a coffee with (and hopefully, Simon Young, her husband, would later join us as well). Miriam and Simon very much reflect Matt and my world views and principles, so it would be great to speak with them and learn from them.

And which character really needs to calm down?
Major Makepeace. I nearly said I would love a coffee with him, but he is very much the yang to Miriam and Simon’s ying. He is a product of the landed gentry and a lifetime spent in service to Her Majesty’s armed forces. He represents single minded thinking, the opinions of the old guard and parrots the superiority of the British Empire’s propaganda. The story really does throw him through the wringer, and makes him challenge his world views and his perception of those around him.

How long does it take you to get to a first draft?
I suppose that depends on how you view a first draft. One of the best things about working with Matt, and with Mike Sambrook on the other books I have co-written, is that when you find someone who you click with when writing and coming up with ideas, the story just flows nicely out of the pair of you.
My experience of getting to a finished first draft stage of Thunder Child was Matt and I coming up with specific sections of the story we wanted to tell and then between us, coming up with the connective tissue that would form those ideas and instances into a cohesive narrative. That is to say, in a simpler way, Matt and I really gel when we’re writing together, we get what one another wants to explore in the narrative and both of us check our egos at the door. Once we started plotting things out, the first draft came pretty quickly between us; the structure of the book, how we navigated our cast and crew towards their fateful showdown, the themes and clashes we wished to introduce and then the set pieces and action we wished to include. I don’t have a specific time frame, but I remember we did wrap it up pretty quickly.

What’s your favourite funny thing about the genre?
My favourite funny thing about Victorian/Edwardian sci-fi is just how relevant the themes and the ideas that were explored in those pioneering works are to us today. I suppose funny, in an ironic way, is a better way of summarising it.
It shows that, despite moving forward exponentially as a species in a technological way, the route problems and struggles that afflict and affect us all are still prevalent now, and that we are all still looking for that escapism, that potentially cataclysmic thing or incident that occurs and acts as the great leveller for society. Always make me chuckle nervously like Ralph Wiggum in danger whenever I sit and think about it for longer than a passing moment.

What does the first day working on a book like this look like compared to the last day?
So, every book you write and work on takes a little piece of you, in my experience. This existed as some half baked idea in my head for a good 25+ years, just the experience of following the crew through the opening days of the invasion up to their epic showdown with the Martians. So I went into this project with gusto and enthusiasm, and I don’t think that has ever waned.
I am just as childishly excited about it as I was in those first few days of Matt and I coming up with the story beats, or when Kevin’s art first started landing in our inboxes, or when Simon Gough first started colouring up those pages. Seeing it develop and flourish and come to fruition, despite many roadblocks, hardships and personal challenges, never dampened my spirit.

Wolfman or Frankenstein?
Wolfman. But only because I am also a hairy beast whose mere visage causes those to flee in terror. Seriously though, the wolfman being this character who is a slave to his darker whims and urges when the moon is full, unable to control them in that state, is a really dark, interesting theme to explore. The guilt that follows, the desperation to stop, or the desire to lean into these moments of fury and Id fueled rampages is such an interesting way to look at a character and explore that.

Martians or Humans?
Humans. I have this inherent, probably naive, belief that humans, in the darkest of times, have an ability to pull together, despite our differences, to overcome threats and pull together and learn from one another. Admittedly, in the times we are currently living in, that belief is being pushed to its absolute limits, but I love this idea of plucky people, working together, learning from one another and trying to overcome something which is a direct threat to our existence in a tangible, real way.

I am a big player and lover of the Warhammer 40k universe, and my main army is the Astar Militarum (Imperial Guard in old money), as I love those 1,000,000:1 shots where the plucky guardsman takes out the Daemonic monster or Alien overlord. So, that was a big influence on my decision here.

Truth or Beauty?
I would say the truth. But the argument can be made that there is a certain beauty in truth, or vice versa. It is a belief of mine that deception and malcontent can affect a person physically, showing in their looks and the way they present themselves to the world.
Again, call this naivety, but truth – be it living your truth, being truthful to yourself and those around you, simply being able to show who you are to the world – is far more beautiful than any outward beauty.

The War Of The Worlds: Thunder Child can be pre-ordered here, and is out on June 2nd 2026.