Even knowing that the titular Jedi Master in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi show will be confronting his old Padawan Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) again after leaving him for dead on the molten banks of Mustafar can’t quite prepare Star Wars fans for the emotional devastation that it will almost certainly leave in its wake.
The last time Kenobi saw the fallen Chosen One, he still retained some semblance of the innocent kid he’d trained all those years ago. This time, he’ll be facing the black-clad Darth Vader in all his menacing evil, which, interestingly, also marks the first time McGregor appears in the same scene as Vader. That, according to what the actor recently told Total Film magazine, positively scared the bejesus out of him.
“I’ve never met Darth Vader. I had rehearsed the scene with Vader, but not with the helmet on or anything like that. When we came to do the scene, when they shouted ‘action,’ he had to come from behind me. I turned around, and f—ing Darth Vader was coming at me. It was like I was six again. I’d never acted into Vader’s helmet. I’d never looked him in the eye.
“It scared the s–t out of me. I’m not joking. It gave me a proper jolt of absolute fear. I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s not acting. That’s real. I’m really, truly frightened right now.’ And the same thing would happen with the Stormtroopers. I’d worked with Clone troopers before, but so many of them were CGI. I never worked with Stormtroopers, and, again, I was like seven years old again. Because when you’re actually faced with a Stormtrooper, with a blaster, it’s like: ‘F—king hell.'”
If the build-up to the scene in question was enough to scare Ewan McGregor, we can only imagine how this so-called “rematch of the century” will play out between the two characters.
Luckily, we don’t have to imagine for long, as Obi-Wan Kenobi will be premiering on Disney Plus in little more than a month on May 27.