Even though he embodied one of the most famous characters in Star Wars lore and played a pivotal role in the Prequel Trilogy that saw him take top billing in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, it still comes as a shock to discover that Ewan McGregor has never shared the screen with a Stromtrooper before, something that’s finally set to change in next year’s Disney Plus series Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Production is in full swing on what might the most hotly-anticipated streaming show set in a galaxy far, far away yet, based entirely on McGregor finally making his comeback to the franchise, after what will be an absence of seventeen years by the time Obi-Wan returns in 2021.
All we know about the project so far is that we’ve been promised the rematch of the century as the title hero and Hayden Christensen’s Darth Vader come face to face again, with the timeline set to unfold between Episodes III and IV. And in a new interview, the leading man expressed his surprise over the fact that it’s taken him more than 20 years to shoot scenes with Stormtroopers, which brought out his inner child in the process.
“I don’t think I’d be giving away a secret, I’ve got to be so careful. There’s no secret to when this series is being set, but I had to walk past two Stormtroopers. I realized I’ve never acted with a Stormtrooper because mine were clones, you know? It was the clone army. So I’d never seen a Stormtrooper. So I was walking past them in this scene. I turned around, and I was six years old again.
Insane. I was feeling like I was six again or something because I’m so close to one and I got a fright, you know? So crazy. Then I asked someone, ‘Were there Stormtroopers in my films? Because I don’t think I’ve seen a Stormtrooper for real before’. They were like ‘No, they weren’t Stormtroopers; they were clones’. And Jawas, I had another scene with a little Jawa.”
As well as bringing back McGregor, Obi-Wan Kenobi also boasts one of the most stacked ensembles ever gathered together for any Star Wars effort either feature-length or episodic, with a lightsaber-wielding Moses Ingram, Eternals‘ Kumail Nanjiani, Game of Thrones‘ Indira Varma, Homeland‘s Rupert Friend, Straight Outta Compton‘s O’Shea Jackson Jr., Fast & Furious‘ Sung Kang and more all signed on.
However, most fans would agree that it doesn’t matter in the slightest who packs out the supporting cast, as the main draw for Obi-Wan Kenobi has always been McGregor, and he’s pulling out all the stops to make sure he lives up to the expectations.
