Posted in: Disney+, Preview, Star Wars, streaming, TV | Tagged: Anakin Skywalker, Benny Safdie, bleeding cool, Bonnie Piesse, cable, darth vader, disney, disney plus, Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christen, indira varma, Jedi, joel edgerton, Kumail Nanjiani, lucasfilm, Maya Erskine, Moses Ingram, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Obi Wan Kenobi, obi-wan, PEN 15, preview, rupert friend, Simone Kessell, sith, star wars, streaming, sung kang, television, tv

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Maya Erskine Joins Lucasfilm, Disney+ Series Cast

With early production underway and filming expected to start any time, "Star Wars" fans are learning who else will be joining Lucasfilm and Disney+'s upcoming Ewan McGregor-starring Obi-Wan Kenobi. PEN 15 star and co-creator Maya Erskine is expected to join the cast in a supporting role for at least three episodes, according to exclusive reporting from Deadline Hollywood. Erskine joins McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Moses Ingram, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Sung Kang, Simone Kessell, and Benny Safdie– with the series taking place 10 years after Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, where Kenobi faced his greatest defeat: the downfall and corruption of his best friend and Jedi apprentice, Anakin Skywalker (Christensen) turned evil Sith Lord Darth Vader.

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.

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