Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Director Details What Makes the Series Different From The Mandalorian

Director Deborah Chow quickly became a household name in geek homes last year after her episodes of Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian were standouts of the show’s first season. It should have been clear that her episodes of the series would be bangers though as she was named the sole director on the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series months before Disney+ even debuted. Working on the two shows will no doubt have a similar feel by playing in the sandbox that is the galaxy far, far away but in a new interview the director has broken down what will be different about directing the two shows.

“It’s definitely going to be different, just in terms of the sheer workload, obviously, of doing the whole thing,” Chow told The Hollywood Reporter. “But in some ways, I’m going to miss having a team, and having people who are there to bounce ideas off of. But then obviously the flip side is, it is nice to have a coherent voice and know what you’re doing from beginning to end.”

Chow went on to talk about what it was like to work with a host of other directors on the first season of The Mandalorian, which saw the likes of Dave Filoni, Rick Famuyiwa, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Taika Waititi helm episodes for the series as well.

“It was an interesting experience because we were in there so early,” Chow added. “I was there two and a half months ahead and we pre-vised everything going in. So as a result, what was really interesting was that all the directors got to really know each other because we’d all be doing pre-vis or prep, as opposed to traditional TV, where you maybe just overlap a little bit with somebody and you’re ships passing in the night. We actually started, in a lot of ways, leaning on each other and collaborating to figure out things like movement, like, ‘How are we defining this character by movement?; It was almost like a team, which I have never been part of.”

The new series will see actor Ewan McGregor return to the part of Obi-Wan Kenobi, having previously played the character in the three Star Wars prequel films. Production on the series was previously delayed from August of this year until January of 2021, a decision made before the coronavirus pandemic shut down film and television sets.

“The scripts are really good. I saw 90% of the writing and I really liked it,” McGregor previously said earlier this year. “All this bullsh-t about creative differences and all that stuff, none of it is true. We just pushed the dates … last episode, [Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker] came out, everyone had more time to read the stuff that had been written, and they felt that they wanted to do more work on it.”

Stay tuned for further details on the new Disney+ series as we learn them.

(Cover photo by Amanda Edwards/WireImage)