In the OBI-WAN KENOBI Press Junket, Ewan McGregor talks about the broken place Obi-Wan Kenobi is coming from after 10 years when Revenge of the Sith takes place.
The Jedi Order have mostly all been destroyed and killed with some stragglers roaming about or gone into hiding. Obi-Wan chose to go into hiding. And there’s no communication amongst the old Jedi, so Obi-Wan is living a pretty solitary life.
McGregor said Obi-Wan’s responsibility is looking over Luke Skywalker who he delivered to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.
“It was interesting to take a character that we know and love from Alec Guinness’ creation of the character in the seventies of this wise, sage-like, spiritual man. Then the work that I did in Episode I to III from the padawan, to the Jedi to somebody who’s sitting on the Jedi council. To take that Obi-Wan and take him to this more sort of broken place was really interesting to do.”
We do see Obi-Wan take this journey and start off as a lonely man until new and old villains come back into his life and he has to make a decision whether to return to the Jedi life.
After all the time had passed, how was it for Ewan to work with Hayden Christensen (Darth Vader) again?
McGregor said, “It was great. When we were acting together, it was really like some sort of time warp. Really like looking across at him on set was like the last 17 years didn’t happen at all, you know. It was really peculiar.”
Since so much time has passed since the prequels came out, including a whole Skywalker Saga, why make Obi-Wan now? It was for the fans!
McGregor said he didn’t think fans liked the prequels, but when he started meeting fans who grew up and were a little older now than when the movies first came out, they couldn’t understand why he thought they weren’t liked when they were in theaters.
“It meant a lot to me, so it’s why I wanted to do this again was because of that. The Star Wars fans are amazingly passionate and they’re probably some of the strongest fans in the world, you know, for anything.”
Well we’re so glad Ewan and Hayden came back for this series, because the first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi are amazing and are now streaming on Disney+!