McGregor reprised his role as the titular Jedi master, with former “Star Wars” Skywalker trilogy co-star Hayden Christensen picking up the lightsaber once again as Darth Vader. However, Christensen had only interacted with McGregor as Anakin before turning to the Dark Side. “I’ve never met Darth Vader,” McGregor explained to Total Film. “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 fucking Darth Vader was coming at me.” McGregor admitted to being taken aback by Vader’s strikingly sinister appearance on set.
“It was like I was six again,” McGregor said. “It scared the shit 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.’”
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The “Obi-Wan Kenobi” star added that the “same thing would happen with the Stormtroopers” during production.
“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,” McGregor continued. “Because when you’re actually faced with a Stormtrooper, with a blaster, it’s like: ‘Fucking hell.’”
He added, “It’s like actual childhood memories of being scared. That’s how deeply it’s in us. I’ve acted for 30 years, and I’ve never been genuinely frightened when I’m acting frightened… But I had moments on this that were genuinely quite scary. It’s so funny.”
Even director Deborah Chow noted that the Vader villain squad is truly a show-stopper…literally.
“There was a moment of silence, collectively, when he first came onto set,” Chow said of first seeing Christensen as Vader. “Just having Vader standing in front of you is a crazy thing. It’s an amazing thing, but it’s very intense when you first start doing it.”
Chow previously told Entertainment Weekly that it was “really intense” to deal with the character of Darth Vader for the spin-off series.
“The first time I saw him in costume and the full thing going, he’s towering over me. He’s like literally almost twice my size,” Chow said. “It’s really intense to have such an iconic character, and then to be directing him and to be doing new scenes with him. So I do remember poor Ewan on that day, he’s like, ‘What am I, chopped liver by comparison right now?’”
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