In a recent interview with Jimmy Fallon Giancarlo Espisito (Moff Gideon) talks about John Favreau introducing him to “the Volume”, the innovative filming studio created specifically for the Mandalorian. With the success of the first season of the Mandalorian, the Volume has become an invaluable tool in the creation of most new Star Wars projects. (Albeit with some drawbacks like claustrophobic feeling scenes that should  be epic in scale on paper. There are also scenes that lack depth making it very obvious you are looking at a backdrop. Notably the city scene on Alderaan in Kenobi.)

      Giancarlo tells Jimmy, "Jon Favreau, who called me and said ‘You wanna be a part of the show” I have good news and bad news. ‘Tell me the good news first’ [I said]. ‘The good news is I wrote a role for you of Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian‘; ‘Oh, what’s that?’ He said, ‘It’s a new Star Wars show that I’m doing’. So I said, ‘Oh, ok, tell me the bad news.’ He said, ‘The bad news is all the money is going into The Volume’

   He goes on to say that he nearly rejected the pay just to become part of the project. "And I said to him, ‘Jon, I wanna work with people I like. That’s the bottom line.’ I did not want to say, I came very close to saying ‘I will do it for free’. But I loved it that much."

    This last statement of his makes me wonder how many other people took less money 😱 to be included in those projects that were first to use the Volume. And because they took less money, did these people feel like they were entitled to more liberty on set, or with their schedules? 
    For example, perhaps the reason Pedro took a brief hiatus from the Mandalorian, to film The Last of Us, was because he too also took a significant pay cut to be involved in SW content that uses the Volume. A pay cut so significant, in conjunction with a new series that had yet to be green lighted for a next season, would give any intelligent person ample cause to search out and accept new projects. Hence, Pedro taking a role in The Last of Us and delaying the filming of Mando season 3.

     Could this also explain why it seemed like Robert Rodriguez was more hyped about playing guitar with Tem than he was about taking the job seriously by honoring legacy characters and locations? After all, it did look like RR and Tem were having a better time making music than they were making SW in the BoBF BTS content. We know about the issues Tem had with Boba’s dialogue, my guess is those guys had less arguments when playing music so they probly played a lot of music. 😉

    I think these are probably past issues now that the Mandalorian has seen such success. Revenue from the Mandalorian S1 & 2 has probably paid for the Volume and future hired talent will probably not be subjected having to work at a discount.  If it is the case that many know actors and directors took less money to work on the first season of the Mandalorian, there’s a lot of talented people that deserve our praise for their time and effort. 🙏

     So if Giancarlo took less money to be in the Mandalorian, do you think others did as well? Did taking less money make some of them feel like they could take more liberty, or do you think it had no bearing at all?


    As always, thanks for looking. 🙏 Let everyone know your thoughts in the comments.