‘Star Wars’ Celebration: “A Look Back at Obi-Wan Kenobi” Panel Recap
Star Wars Celebration 2023 wasn’t entirely about announcing and revealing new information about future movies and shows. A number of the casts and creative teams behind some of last year’s biggest Star Wars releases also appeared to discuss their recent work. Tony Gilroy and some of the Andor cast spoke about their show on the convention’s first day, and now Deborah Chow and some of the stars of the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries have had a chance to talk about theirs in similar depth.
Series director Deborah Chow and stars Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Vivien Lyra Blair, and Indira Varma sat down with host Amy Ratcliffe to look back at their time working on the series and talk about their favorite scenes from it. The cast kicked off the discussion by revealing how they each became involved with the show.
Each actor’s story is worth listening to, but it’s Vivien Lyra Blair’s that stands out the most. The young performer revealed that she went through more than seven rounds of auditions before she got the part of Leia. The process was so secretive that there were “codenames for the codenames” of the characters at first. It wasn’t until she had made it through all those auditions and done a chemistry test with McGregor that she was finally offered the part — her casting took nearly a year.
The panelists also took a moment to mention that this event was Blair’s first time doing an interview for the series with the rest of the cast. Leia’s inclusion in the story, while rumored, was intended to be a secret until the series released, so Blair wasn’t able to participate in early interviews or to promote the show.
The actors then talked about their characters’ emotional journeys and evolving relationships with each other. Indira Varma praised the complexity of her character, the Imperial double agent Tala Durith:
“I think it’s fantastic to play duality. I feel that she’s so human. She started from a place of believing in something, the Empire, with such strength, and it let her down. And I think it takes massive courage to turn the other way and live this double life in order to help Jedi, really, and to make good all the bad that she has witnessed, all the bad that she herself has done.”
Because Obi-Wan Kenobi served as an interquel of sorts between the prequels and the original trilogy, it had a lot of backstory as well as future canon to keep in mind. Sure enough, Deborah Chow mentioned that telling a compelling narrative with emotional character relationships while respecting the established continuity posed a significant challenge:
“That was one of the trickiest parts was trying to thread the needle at the end. Obviously, we’re going through all the canon pretty closely to figure out how we can make it make sense for everyone and the characters. So I think that final scene for us was really pivotal when they say goodbye and you have Ewan saying ‘We have to keep this quiet, but if you ever need me…’ and whatnot. So it was very nice to kind of bring it all around, but it definitely was the biggest challenge of this project in between two trilogies and trying to link with the canon.”
Next, Christensen and McGregor spoke for a few minutes about the flashback scene between their characters in the show’s fifth episode. McGregor said that scene was the first one that he and Christensen filmed together. Chow also revealed that neither actor used a stunt double for the sequence, and she praised McGregor for doing “99% of everything himself” in the series’ action scenes.
While both prequel trilogy actors were enthusiastic to learn and film the lightsaber scenes, doing so came at a cost. Said McGregor:
“You did feel those 20 years in the… I mean, we had to put in probably a lot more effort. For me, anyway, just in terms of getting fit again. Because shooting the fights, it’s like a sort of boxing match. You get up to do a take, and it’s a full-on exhalation of energy. And then, cut. And then, you have to do it again and again, and all day long. So I knew that I couldn’t rely on my youthful sort of laziness from the first three… But anyway, we did it, didn’t we? The fight boys were great, and girls were great, and we just had a great time.”
Finally, each panelist had the opportunity to talk about their favorite scene from the show. Deborah Chow went first, and said that her favorite scene was Darth Vader’s introduction on Mapuzo in the third episode. She spoke about the scene’s importance in the series’ overarching narrative:
“One of the reasons I really loved doing this scene is it’s the first time for these two characters being in the same physical proximity since the prequels. And so there’s such a psychology and it’s emotional. And also, as a director, it’s so great getting to build things like that where it’s almost all emotion and visual… So it was incredibly fun to do. And then, so much of what the series was about was leading to the final scene in [episode] six with the cracked mask, and so this is the beginning of that starting to come in. And the dynamic between them, it was just really amazing to get to direct something like that. And also I just loved kind of having Vader shred everybody honestly!”
As it turns out, the final scene that Chow briefly mentions here is Christensen’s favorite from the show:
“Just within the context of the saga, it’s a great bit of Star Wars. And a really important scene not just to the tragedy of the character of Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader but the tragedy of the relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan.”
The final conversation between Obi-Wan and his former apprentice definitely impacts the broader saga. When Vader insists that he, not Obi-Wan, is responsible for Anakin’s “death”, it has a dual meaning. It both absolves Obi-Wan of his guilt over Anakin’s fate and lends new context to his claim to Luke years later that Vader betrayed and murdered his father.
Finally, McGregor revealed that his favorite scene is also one of the show’s last: the farewell between Obi-Wan and Leia. He told the audience what it was like for him to watch that scene for the first time:
“When I first saw it, I came down to the studio and met with Deb and I watched the first three episodes… And then when I came back to watch the second block, I was totally alone in an edit room… But when it came to this, and John Williams’ music creeps in, and I was sitting there and when we say goodbye to each other, I was just sitting alone crying my eyes out! I really was!”
The panel concluded with everyone thanking Deborah Chow for making the series, and McGregor told everyone how much he appreciated getting the chance to return to the Star Wars universe after some time away:
“It was so special to do it. The time that passed between playing him before and now, it just was the right time to come back to do it again for me. There’s something in my heart that’s opened up in terms of the acceptance of the whole thing in my life… The Star Wars part of my life is back, and it feels really good. I have to say it feels really good. And you know, hopefully, someone might think we should do some more.”
It remains to be seen whether or not there will be more seasons of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kathleen Kennedy just said that no second season has been greenlit, and the show was introduced in this very panel as a limited series. Still, if the fan demand is there, we may yet see McGregor take up his lightsaber once again. He certainly seems eager to do so yet again.
If you want to watch the full Obi-Wan Kenobi retrospective panel, you can find it below:
And, as an extra, here’s James Arnold Taylor (voice of Obi-Wan in animation) meeting Ewan McGregor for the first time (really!):
After 21 years finally got to shake hands & say a quick “Hello there” to the wonderful & kind Sir Ewan. Would’ve loved to say more than “Uh, hi, I’m the guy that does Obi-Wan in Clone Wars” but he was a little busy making thousands of fans happy in his photo op. @SW_Celebration pic.twitter.com/Gl5I8I0zNA
— James Arnold Taylor (@JATactor) April 9, 2023
Eric has been a fan of Star Wars ever since the age of five (or so) when his parents sat him down in front of a TV with pizza and a Sprite and showed him the original trilogy. He keeps trying to convince more fans to read the amazing 1980s Star Wars newspaper comics by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson. When he's not reading, watching or playing Star Wars media, he's often enjoying other great fantasy and science fiction sagas or playing roleplaying games with his friends.
