Ewan McGregor Says The Mandalorian Got Him Back Into Star Wars

For almost 45 years, Star Wars has reigned as one of the most popular and beloved brands on the planet, and ever since The Phantom Menace arrived in 1999, each new project set in a galaxy far, far away has inevitably featured more than its fair share of actors who grew up as fans of the franchise.

A great deal of the ensemble across both the Prequel and Sequel trilogies, and now the roster of Disney Plus exclusives, have been lifelong Star Wars enthusiasts, with Ewan McGregor one of the most prominent. It must have been wild for someone who saw George Lucas’ Original Trilogy as a kid to end up playing Obi-Wan Kenobi as a young man, but you get the distinct impression that the 50 year-old’s fandom waned after he spent years working on Episodes I, II and III, an experience he’s never spoken about in overwhelmingly positive fashion given the dearth of tangible elements to interact with.

However, in a new interview where he and Pedro Pascal questioned each other about their lives and careers, McGregor admitted that it was The Mandalorian that reignited his love for Star Wars, even though rumors of an Obi-Wan Kenobi spinoff had been circulating for years at that point, and the project had actually come close to happening before the entire Anthology experiment was abandoned.

“It pulled me back into the Star Wars world, The Mandalorian series, in a way I didn’t expect. It blew me away how much I loved it. I just came directly from our set on the Kenobi series, and I’m working with so many of your crew from The Mandalorian. In fact, Deborah Chow is directing all of our series, and I know she directed episodes of your first season. I’m having such an amazing time down there with that incredible technology, and not being in front of too much green screen and blue screen.”

Some years in the future when the 50th Star Wars series premieres on Disney Plus, we might end up looking back at The Mandalorian as one of the most important shows in the history of television, which saw Hollywood embrace its biggest blockbuster properties as the basis for episodic adventures that can only be found in one place, and we’ll be three or four generations of new fans down the line by then as well, who’ll have probably starred in some of them, too.