Ewan McGregor has had to lie in the past about reprising his iconic role as Obi-Wan Kenobi before filming the recent Disney+ series.
So some fans may not take the actor’s word when he says that no one from the Star Wars universe has contacted him about taking on another role as a Jedi Master.
But that was exactly his stance when he sat down for an interview with LADbible while promoting his latest series A Gentleman in Moscow, in which he stars alongside his real-life wife, Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
“I haven’t gotten any phone calls from Lucasfilm or Disney saying, ‘Let’s do another one.’ Obi-Wan was made as a limited series and it’s out and people like it, which I’m very, very happy.”
He continued: ‘I love doing it. I hope we get the chance to do another one and I’m sure we will. I’m pretty sure, you know, I still have a few years left before I’m the same age as Alec Guinness was in A New Hope. So there’s time to tell more stories there.”
Ewan McGregor, 53, has opened up about whether he will reprise his iconic role as Obi-Wan Kenobi while promoting his new series A Gentleman in Russia.
So at this point, McGregor maintains that there’s nothing in the works for him to reprise the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he’s “pretty sure” he’ll get the chance to do another Star Wars production.
The question of whether he has another role as Obi-Wan in the making will likely come up every time he is interviewed for anything related to his acting career.
And although he has lied about it in the past, with this evasion he assures the interviewer that he is now telling the truth.
“The truth is, I’ve talked about having to cover Obi-Wan’s season for years, I had to lie about it and I’m not lying about it now,” the veteran protagonist said with a straight face.
McGregor first took on the role of Obi-Wan in the prequel film Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), alongside Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd, Ian McDiarmid, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Pernilla August and Frank Oz. .
Written and directed by George Lucas, the first of the trilogy grossed a whopping $1.027 million at the global box office against a budget of $115 million.
The next Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002), directed by Lucas, who co-wrote the script with Jonathan Hales, didn’t do as well on the money-making front, but still grossed $653.8 million while working. with another budget of 115 million dollars.
Lucas wrote and directed Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), which was released three years later and earned $868.4 million after spending $113 million on production.
The Scottish actor first joined the Star Wars universe when he starred alongside Liam Neeson in Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), written and directed by George Lucas.
McGregor played Obi-Wan in George Lucas’ three Star War prequel films that also featured Hayden Christiansen.
It took about 17 years until McGregor returned to the role of Obi-Wan for the Disney+ series directed by Deborah Chow.
The cast also included the likes of Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Jimmy Smits, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Rupert Friend, Sung Kang, Moses Ingram, Vivien Lyra Blair, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma and O’Shea Jackson Jr.
The project originated as a spin-off film written by Hossein Amini and directed by Stephen Daldry, but was eventually transformed into a limited series following the commercial failure of the film Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), which still grossed $393.2. millions of dollars. against a huge budget of between 270 and 330.4 million dollars.
Alden Ehrenreich took on the iconic role of Han Solo from Harrison Ford for the film directed by Ron Howard, who worked from a script by Jonathan Kasdan and Lawrence Kasdan.
The Perth, Scotland native last played the Jedi Master in the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022), which consisted of six episodes.
For his latest role in A Gentleman in Moscow, McGregor plays Count Alexander Rostov, a man who has just returned to Russia from Paris and who is arrested and spends decades banished to an attic hotel room following the October Revolution after being sentenced to prison. arrest by a Bolshevik court.
Created by Ben Vanstone, who co-wrote the scripts with Nessah Muthy, the eight-episode series is based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Amor Towles.
“There is something in the novel of Love that I had not felt like that about a book in a long time, it absolutely absorbed me in the story and I lived in it,” he confessed when asked what was the first thing that attracted him to interpret the paper.
The October Revolution, also known as the October Coup, was led by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Party and is considered a key moment in the broader Russian Revolution of 1917-1923.
For his latest role, Ewan McGregor plays Count Rostov alongside his real-life wife Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Alexa Goodall in the Showtime-Paramount+ series A Gentleman in Moscow.
It was the second revolutionary change of government in Russia in 1917, and took place through an armed insurrection in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) on ​​November 7, 1917.
To help achieve the look of the role of Count Alexander Rostov, McGregor sported a truly magnificent mustache.
Along with McGregor, the cast includes Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Fehinti Balogun, Daniel Cerqueria, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, Johnny Harris, Leah Harvey, John Heffernan, Paul Ready, Lyès Salem, Anastasia Hille and Jason Forbes, among others in recurring roles.
The British series premiered on Showtime and Paramount+ on March 29, and the following seven episodes will be released every Friday until May 17.