Star Wars: Kumail Nanjiani Recalls Experience of Shooting Obi-Wan Kenobi Series

There hasn’t been a live-action Star Wars TV series on Disney+ since the second season of The Mandalorian came to an end at the start of the year, but the folks at Lucasfilm have quite a few new shows in the works for the next few years. Perhaps the most highly anticipated of these projects features the return of one of the most beloved characters in all of Star Wars lore: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Ewan McGregor is reprising his role as the iconic Jedi for the new TV series, and he’s being joined by several other notable actors, including Eternals and Silicon Valley star Kumail Nanjiani.

No one outside of Lucasfilm knows exactly who Nanjiani is playing in the recently wrapped Obi-Wan Kenobi series, but the actor’s role is a sizable one and he shares quite a few scenes with the titular Jedi. While speaking with Rolling Stone, Nanjiani opened up about his experience on the new Star Wars series.

“I’d heard Ewan [McGregor] was super nice. And then we got to know each other a little bit, just hanging out and talking,” Nanjiani began. “Then there was this weird moment where I’m talking to Ewan and they yell ‘Action,’ and he’d started talking to me, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m talking to Obi-Wan right now. This is not Ewan McGregor. This is Obi-Wan Kenobi that I’m talking to.’ My character is supposed to be a little bit intimidated by him, and I was a little bit intimidated. You know, it’s fucking Obi-Wan, what are you gonna do?”

Nanjiani went on to talk about working on the Volume technology that many of the Star Wars project now utilize, which creates a digital environment around the set.

“You really feel like you’re there,” the actor said. “The first scene we shot, it was Star Wars outside the windows, with aliens walking around and ships flying by and all this stuff, but the rest of it just looked like a warehouse. So I did a couple of takes and then Ewan was like, “You know, none of this is real.” I knew the windows weren’t real, but the walls weren’t either! I looked and I was like, “Wow, the walls are projected.” The only thing that was real in the whole room was the desk I was sitting at. It was wild. It was really, really exciting. I love shooting like that, because you don’t have to pretend that you’re on a spaceship flying through space. It really feels like you’re in a spaceship flying through space. And it’s amazing to be inside the world of Star Wars, the world that I’ve been watching since I was born. I’ve been a fan as long as I can remember. In fact, I just went to Disneyland, and I went to the Star Wars world, and I was like, “Oh, this kinda feels like being at work.”

From director Deborah Chow, Obi-Wan Kenobi also stars Hayden Christensen, Moses Ingram, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Sung Kang, Simone Kessell, and Benny Safdie.

Are you looking forward to the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series? Let us know in the comments!