Posted in: Disney+, Preview, Star Wars, streaming, TV | Tagged: Anakin Skywalker, darth vader, disney plus, Ewan McGregor, for life, game of thrones, Hayden Christensen, indira varma, Obi Wan Kenobi, star wars

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Indira Varma Set to Join "Star Wars" Spinoff Series

Published Mon, 01 Mar 2021 16:29:41 -0600

by Ray Flook

Last updated Mon, 01 Mar 2021 16:32:43 -0600

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Last week, we checked in with a jacked-up Ewan McGregor who was in the middle of getting in shape with fitness and health expert/trainer Tony Horton for his upcoming run in Disney+'s Obi-Wan Kenobi. On Monday, fans learned who would be joining McGregor and a returning Hayden Christensen on the series- with Deadline Hollywood reporting exclusively that Indira Varma (Game of Thrones, For Life) has joined the projects. Expected to take place between "Revenge of the Sith" and "A New Hope," little else is known about the series- including details on Varma's character.

Preparing for a series he says is "a long time coming," McGregor revealed in an interview with Empire last year and 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."

Director Deborah Chow moves from directing episodes of The Mandalorian to directing the entire run of the series with directorial "geek cred" that also includes American Gods, Better Call Saul, Lost in Space, Jessica Jones, Reign, and Mr. Robot. In April 2020, 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.