Obi-Wan Kenobi star Ewan McGregor says he’s received a ‘lot of homoerotic’ Star Wars fan art
Ewan McGregor reveals that he’s gotten a “lot of homoerotic” fan art of featuring his Star Wars co-star Hayden Christensen. (YouTube/Star Wars)
Obi-Wan Kenobi star Ewan McGregor has revealed that he’s received a good amount of “homoerotic” fan art thanks to his role in the popular Star Wars franchise.
The actor first played the Jedi Master back in 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and recently reprised the role for Disney Plus’ spin-off series Obi-Wan Kenobi. The series also saw the return of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader.
McGregor spoke to GQ about fans shipping Obi-Wan and Anakin due to their close bond which has resulted in him getting some ‘eye-opening’ mail depicting the characters in a romantic relationship.
“There’s a lot of homoerotic Obi-Wan/Hayden [Christensen] fan art that gets sent to me now and again,” McGregor said. “I don’t know how it finds me.”
He continued: “It’s always a bit of an eye-opener.
“You open the envelope, you think you’re going to have to sign something, and you’re like, ‘Fucking hell!’”
McGregor also recalled how everyone used to ask if he was doing a sequel to Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, “which was called Porno”. But he said that role has been quickly overshadowed by diehard Star Wars fans “constantly” bombarding him with requests to reprise his iconic role as Obi-Wan Kenobi before he quit social media.
“And everyone asked if I was going to do that, and would immediately follow up, ‘And what about Obi-Wan Kenobi, would you play him again?’” Ewan McGregor said.
“I did a bit of social media then – I don’t anymore – but I would see it constantly, this question, are you going to do it again? Are you going to do it again?”
Ewan McGregor says the fan art that he’s received of his Star Wars character Obi-Wan Kenobi and Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker has been ‘eye-opening’. (LucasFilm)
McGregor revealed in a roundtable interview attended by Insider that the fans were the driving force behind why he decided to return to the Star Wars franchise.
He said movie critics didn’t “very much” like the Star Wars prequels so it had taken a “long time for the kids”, who the movies were really made for, to have their voices be heard.
“And to realise that for that generation, our movies were the Star Wars movies in the same way that Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford’s movies were mine,” he said.
McGregor continued: “So it’s a really nice feeling for me that that’s the case, that I have a sense now that there’s this warmth for those films.
“It absolutely is part of the reason I wanted to come back and play him again.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi director Deborah Chow previously told Vanity Fair that there was an inherent “love-story dynamic” between the Jedi Master and Vader throughout the Star Wars franchise.
“For me, across the prequels, through the original trilogy, there’s a love-story dynamic with these two that goes through the whole thing,” Chow said. “I felt like it was quite hard to not [include] the person who left Kenobi in such anguish in the series.”
Chow shared that she didn’t think Obi-Wan would “ever not care” about Vader because “what’s special about that relationship is that they loved each other”.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is currently streaming on Disney Plus.
