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The space cereal on Andor tastes like 'dreams and unicorns'

EW launches a full-scale investigation into the true star of Andor: Syril Karn's cereal.

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Published on November 3, 2022 12:15PM EDT

Andor is the story of how a street-smart killer on the run eventually turned into a rebel intelligence officer. And it's a story of a senator secretly fighting against the system from the shadows. But, perhaps most important of all, it is the story of a socially awkward neat freak obsessed with space cereal.

That socially awkward neat freak's name is Syril Karn. And when the weight of the galaxy, and his overbearing mother Edie, and his lack of a satisfying job situation gets him down, Syril loves nothing more than to drown his sorrows in a big bowl of space cereal drowned in a sea of blue milk.

Yes, Syril loves cereal! And with a rhyme like that, how could he not? Well, it turns out Syril is not the only one obsessed with the stuff. The man who plays him, Kyle Soller, is also singing the praises of space cereal! "Have you tasted it?" he asked while appearing on EW's Star Wars podcast, Dagobah Dispatch. "It tastes like dreams and unicorns. It's like the best thing ever!"

How Syril ended up downing space cereal is something of a story in itself. "I remember when the props people were talking to me, they were like, 'Is there anything that you don't eat?' And I was like, 'No. What's this for?' They said, 'lt's for your breakfast.' And I was like, 'What the hell? What are you doing to me?' And they came up with these, like, Star Wars Cocoa Puffs, which are surprisingly delicious."

Really? Delicious? Because the coloring on those Star Wars Cocoa Puffs looks bordering on moldy. "Well, I'm pretty sure that Edie's been keeping that cereal since Cyril left home," notes Soller. "So it's probably been the same batch for like 10 years in the cupboard waiting for him to come back."

The cereal in question actually ends up becoming a wall Syril constructs between him and Edie (played to perfection by Kathryn Hunter), never more so than in episode 9, when he attempts to drown out her talking with some loud, exaggerated slurping. "I tried to come up with different ways to piss Kathryn off," laughs Soller. "She's such a beautiful performer and we got to play around with each other a lot. But also, you can see in the progression of the episodes, he chooses to wage war with his mother through the material aspect of his breakfast food, which is kind of demoralizing and infantilizing for her to keep serving him these Star Wars Cocoa Puffs. Because it's also a signifier that she doesn't know him anymore, so incrementally, bit by bit he starts to get a little more aggressive with his eating."

Of course, mom is not the only person Syril has been aggressive with. The former corporate deputy inspector got called out this week for essentially stalking dogged ISB agent Dedra Meero (played by Denise Gough). Is Syril just ecstatic that someone else understands the grave threat that Cassian Andor presents, or is the uniform-obsessed Karn smitten with the similarly high-strung Dedra?

"She represents an ideal, but also a twin flame," says Soller. "And somebody who has that same drive and obsession and desire for power and order and doing the right thing at whatever the cost. And he's also taken by the fact that it's a woman in the ISB. I mean, count the number of women you see sitting around that table. That all is like a huge explosion for him, and he doesn't know if it's romantic. He's just kind of like vibrating off of her frequency, you know?"

To vibe on more of Soller's frequency, check out his full Andor interview on the latest episode of EW's Dagobah Dispatch., where you can also hear from the likes of Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Rosario Dawson, Pedro Pascal, and more.

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The space cereal on Andor tastes like 'dreams and unicorns'

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