More Henry Gilroy, plus Dave Filoni

Pretty sure this is old, but whatever.   Choice Quotes:

Henry: George gave Dave and I a lot of freedom and he didn’t want us to be limited by what the EU had established.

Filoni:

This series at least to George is NOT EU, it is a part of Star Wars
as he sees it. I think if anything there was a period where Henry and I
had to learn exactly what it took to be a part of George Lucas’ Star
Wars, and tell the Star Wars story his way. We had to learn how to look
at the Galaxy from his point of view and let go of some of what we
considered canon after we found out the ideas were only EU. Really we
had to “unlearn what we had learned” and go back to the movies as the
defining source material.

Filoni:

Even now, I look at the stories I’m working on and add elements to
connect them to aspects of the EU to tie it all together when it makes
sense.

Filoni:

I once pitched George the idea that Plo had a parachute and that he
bailed out of his fighter before it crashed. Then George said he would
only continue the scene and make Plo’s death more painful, I think his
parachute was going to catch fire and he falls on something sharp.

Gilroy and Filoni:

Henry: When I started writing the show bible, George said, “Stay
away from Han, Chewie, Boba Fett and Jabba.” Well... George changed his
mind about Jabba at the very next meeting. George also said, “And don’t
go to any of the planets I went to in the films.” Then eight months
later he changed his mind, “Let’s go to ‘DELETED’. What if there’s a
secret Separatist base on ‘DELETED’?” So let’s just say we’ll see some
familiar Star Wars places besides Tatooine. Lots more cool new planets
though. George gave us a tremendous amount of freedom on the show.

Dave: George is always good at listening to ideas. He does pitch us
every story now and gives us rather detailed outlines. In first season,
it was a little different, but now a lot of the time George will come
in and say, “I want to do a story about ‘X’.” Now the part you are all
interested in — if what he pitches includes areas that are covered in
the EU — this is my only real chance to get the EU material in on the
ground floor of the story, right at the beginning, when George presents
his idea. I will bring up ideas that are similar in the EU, or talk
about how that particular group of characters already has a backstory.
Sometimes I would print out whole Wookiepedia entries and show it to
him, but now I use the big official encyclopedia set. In the end it is
up to George whether it counts or not and that’s his right as the
creator of the Star Wars Universe.

More here.