Posted in: Disney+, Preview, Star Wars, streaming, TV, YouTube | Tagged: bleeding cool, cable, disney, Ewan McGregor, ewn mcgregor, jimmy fallon, nbc, obi-wan, preview, star wars, streaming, teaser, television, Tonight Show, trailer, tv

Obi-Wan: Ewan McGregor Channels Evel Knievel, Lives to Tell About It

Ewan McGregor has been a one-man public relations for Disney+'s live-action Obi-Wan series lately, dispensing cautious but hopeful updates on when production will get underway and why he's excited to be returning to the role. From the looks of things, it doesn't appear there's any mountain he won't climb… and river he won't swim… any Obi-Wan Kenobi action figure he won't jump… to do right by the character.

What? Oh, that last part? We mean that literally, because that's what McGregor did when challenged to an "epic stunt" by The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon– a challenge they weren't sure he would accept (or take seriously, probably). Oh, ye of little faith! With daughter Anouk McGregor working as cinematographer, McGregor took flight in what can best be described as poetry in motion. Check out the history-making moment for yourselves below, with some thoughts from the thespian-turned-amateur Evel Knievel:

But it wasn't all about the physical, with Fallon challenging McGregor mental acumen by tasking him to determining if a word is Scottish slang, from the Star Wars universe, or a motorcycle term:

Preparing for a series he says is "a long time coming," McGregor revealed in an interview with Empire earlier that he's more excited to play the iconic character now than he was in the last two prequel films. "I'm more excited about doing this one than I was doing the second and third one that we did before," the actor explained. One of the reasons for the excitement: his director. "I'm just excited about working with Deborah Chow [director], and the storylines are going to be really good I think. I'm just excited to play him again. It's been long enough since I played him before," said McGregor.

McGregor's also looking forward to getting some time filming on The Volume, the high-resolution video wall tech that allows for large-scale artificial environment creation used by The Mandalorian. "The first three [Star Wars films] I did were really at the very beginning of digital photography," the actor explains. "We had a camera with an umbilical cord to a tent, it was like back to the beginning of movies where the camera didn't move very much because there was so much hardware attached to it. Now we're going to be able to really create stuff without swathes of green-screen and blue-screen, which becomes very tedious for the actor."

Deborah Chow is moving from directing The Mandalorian to a turn in the director's chair for the Disney+ live-action Star Wars spinoff series.  Heading into the Star Wars universe, Chow's directorial "geek cred" was already firmly established by directing and work on series such as American Gods, Better Call Saul, Lost in Space, Jessica Jones, Reign, and Mr. Robot. In April, Joby Harold (Army of the Dead) was tapped to replace Hossein Amini (Drive) after reports surfaced that Lucasfilm president and Obi-Wan producer Kathleen Kennedy was dissatisfied with Amini's scripts. Allegedly, Kennedy was concerned that having the lead character serve as a mentor to a young Luke and/or Leia skewed too close to The Mandalorian-The Child aka "Baby Yoda" dynamic.

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