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When Kenobi met Skywalker: Ewan McGregor recalls his first meeting with Star Wars costar Hayden Christensen
From the very beginning, Ewan McGregor felt a brotherly bond with Hayden Christensen
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Sometimes you meet someone who changes the course of your entire life. For Obi-Wan Kenobi, that person was Anakin Skywalker. Their friendship changed the course of the entire galaxy, and it’s hard to think of where the Star Wars franchise would be without their iconic partnership.
Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen explored Kenobi and Skywalker’s backstory in the prequel films Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. In an interesting case of life imitating art, their friendship behind the scenes mirrored the relationship seen onscreen (minus the betrayal and lightsaber maiming).
Speaking to a crowd at SpaceCon San Antonio, McGregor recalled what it was like when he met his Padawan for the first time. “I don’t remember what I thought about that at the time. Probably not very much, because we were about to start the second one in Australia, and I obviously knew Hayden, and I knew that he was going to be playing the part, but I had never met him. I was excited to meet him because I knew that we had this journey to go on as Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker, but also that it would not just be for this movie, but for the next one. I knew that we would have two. I didn’t know beyond that.”
According to McGregor, the bond was instant. “You never know with people how you’re going to click with them or not, but right from the word ‘go,’ I clicked with him.”
McGregor went on to say that because of the different places they were at with their careers, his relationship with Christensen mirrored the onscreen relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan. “By that time, I had been working for six or seven years or something, so I had made quite a lot of work. I was self-assured in how I went about it and who I was as an actor. And Hayden was 19, I think, and super young, and super enthusiastic, so there was also a sense of the sort of Obi-Wan and Anakin paternal feeling towards him. Absolutely, we were like brothers for sure. At that time, I felt protective of him, and responsibility for him as a young actor.”
“They are difficult films to make because there are no sets. I felt protective of him as well, I think. But I love him like a brother for sure.”
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