Ewan McGregor has always been open and honest when it comes to addressing his dissatisfaction shooting the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, where a huge amount of his work required him to react to things that weren’t there as he stood in front of a cavernous green screen.
That’s all set to change with Disney Plus series Obi-Wan Kenobi, though, and it’s all thanks to Lucasfilm’s pioneering Stagecraft technology. Moving away from drab surroundings that offer no sense of tangible reality, the studio instead projects fully-rendered backdrops against the walls of its soundstages, creating a greater level of realism and immersion for the cast.
One Star Wars newcomer who found himself caught up in the moment was Eternals star Kumail Nanjiani, who revealed in a new interview with Rolling Stone that he got so excited he forgot he was almost completely alone on set.
“You really feel like you’re there. The first scene we shot, it was Star Wars outside the windows, with aliens walking around and ships flying by and all this stuff, but the rest of it just looked like a warehouse. So I did a couple of takes and then Ewan was like, ‘You know, none of this is real’. I knew the windows weren’t real, but the walls weren’t either! I looked and I was like, ‘Wow, the walls are projected’. The only thing that was real in the whole room was the desk I was sitting at. It was wild. It was really, really exciting.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi is arguably the most anticipated Disney Plus exclusive the streaming service has ever added to its lineup, combining the generational love audiences have for Star Wars with one of the franchise’s most popular figures making his return after sixteen years away. The only question is whether or not it’ll live up to the hype, but we’ve got no reason to doubt it.