Ewan McGregor Says Reprising Star Wars Role Was A "Different Experience"

Ewan McGregor has described reprising his role of Obi-Wan Kenobi as a "different experience".

This latest Star Wars spin-off show sees McGregor reprise his role for the first time in almost two decades. McGregor stars in the Disney TV series Obi-Wan Kebobi. He previously played the character in three Star Wars prequels between 1999 and 2005. 

 "It was a different experience technologically now as opposed to technologically 20 years ago, so of course it is a different world", McGregor said. 

The actor also revealed that the fans' reactions to the prequels prompted him to reprise the role. 

 "I became aware of the sort of warmth that there is for the prequels - when they came out, we didn’t have that sense", he continued. "When they came out, there was no social media, I wasn’t aware of how the fans felt about the films, all I knew was that the critics didn’t like them, or what was written about the films was always negative". 

"I’ve never been one to sort of look for fan reactions, but the noise we had coming back from the original films was pretty dire".

"The critics decided that they didn’t like them, that they were too different from the original Star Wars films of the 70s". 

He also added, "After all that effort and and also the excitement of being cast as Obi Wan Kenobi in the first place, to be stepping into the shoes of Guinness and to be going into that big world of Star Wars and then for it to get a bad reaction, it was hard and it’s taken years to start hearing and feeling the sort of the warmth that there is for those films from really the people we made them for". 

"It felt nice after waiting such a long time to feel that sort of warmth for them, it meant something to me and it was definitely part of my decision to want to do it again". 

Obi-Wan Kebobi had appeared in the first six Star Wars films, played by Alec Guinness from 1977 to 1983, before the role was taken on by McGregor.

Ewan McGregor revealed that he watched each original Star Wars films, and listened to audio of Guinness's performances. 

"I put that on and it was first time I’d worn his clothes for 17 years so that was kind of weird looking in the mirror and thinking 'here we go’.

"I walked out on set and of course, nowadays, what’s lovely is a lot of the crew are real Star Wars fans, so there was a sort of a buzz as I walked out on set as Obi Wan for the first time".

"I started doing these scenes with these actors and I just didn’t have his voice, I hadn’t really prepared enough. It just didn’t sound like him".

"So that’s when I started going back into all the original movies, I got them to make a sound file with just all Alec Guinness’ lines from all the three films that he did, and it’s not a lot you know". 

This series is also part of a collection of live action Star Wars for Disney+.