According to Ewan McGregor, the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy's heavy reliance on CGI settings and backdrops made it difficult for him to portray Obi-Wan Kenobi in the films.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, McGregor noted the films became increasingly reliant on blue screen sets over the course of their development "because [director] George [Lucas] loves technology and loves pushing into that realm." As a result, the final movie in the trilogy, 2005's Revenge of the Sith, featured little in the way of practical scenery. "After three or four months of that, it just gets really tedious -- especially when the scenes are... I don't want to be rude, but it's not Shakespeare," he said. "There's not something to dig into in the dialogue that can satisfy you when there's no environment there. It was quite hard to do."
McGregor first played Obi-Wan Kenobi as a padawan in 1999's The Phantom Menace. He went on to reprise the role in the film's sequels, bringing the character closer to the older, bearded Jedi Master played by Alec Guinness in 1977's Star Wars: A New Hope. McGregor is now preparing to reprise the role again for Disney+'s Obi-Wan Kenobi, a limited series that will follow the titular character during his period of exile on Tatooine between the Prequel and Original trilogies.
As challenging as McGregor found it to act against blue screens on the Prequel Trilogy, he's looking forward to working on Obi-Wan Kenobi using the StageCraft technology pioneered by The Mandalorian creator/showrunner Jon Favreau. The process involves projecting "[the virtual backgrounds] onto this massive LED screen," he explained. "So if you're in a desert, you're standing in the middle of a desert. If you're in the snow, you're surrounded by snow. And if you're in a cockpit of a starfighter, you're in space. It's going to feel so much more real."
In addition, McGregor talked about the relief of being able to confirm his return as Obi-Wan after years of having to keep it a secret. "I'd see stuff on social media like, 'They better cast Ewan as Obi-Wan,' and I wasn't able to say anything," he said. "But it was pretty humiliating to think that [Disney] might be thinking about casting someone else."
Directed by Deborah Chow, Obi-Wan Kenobi stars Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Joel Edgerton, Moses Ingram, Bonnie Piesse, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Sung Kang, Simone Kessell, Benny Safdie and Maya Erskine. The series has yet to receive a premiere date.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter