Fiona Shaw breaks down her Andor character: "It's a very grand gauntlet to have to pick up"

gamesradar.com:

When we meet Cassian Andor in Star Wars spin-off Rogue One, he's a complete enigma. All we know for sure is that he's been in the fight against the Empire since he was six years old. That's about to change. A new Star Wars series, set five years before Rogue One, is all about Andor. The new show fleshes out the character, offering a deeper insight into his life on the planet Ferrix. In the first three episodes alone, we meet his friends, foes, and family, including his adoptive mother Maarva, played by Fiona Shaw. 

"She's very much a daughter of Ferrix," Shaw tells Total Film of her character. "She is actually a member of a thing called the Daughters of Ferrix, who are like a community group of women who keep the moral standing of the planet very well. So she's a very revered person, and she also is a very old person, and she's not so well by the time we meet her in this series."

A lot of what we learn about Maarva comes from flashbacks. We see her scavenging on a crashed spaceship on Cassian's home planet of Kenari. "She and her husband have made a living going around to various planets, collecting bits of metal from spaceships," Shaw explains. "You suddenly see that all of this could be a parallel with Detroit maybe in the '70s, where people were recycling bits of cars. So they're recyclers, there's an element of people who are from another time, who are reusing the world. She's a very anonymous person. I don't think she's a person with a big ego, she's a person with a big heart. And she certainly has a great moral compass, and I think that becomes very, very important in this particular season."

Much of Star Wars revolves around the relationships between fathers and sons, but Andor brings a strong, multifaceted mother