Star Wars Actor Officially Breaks Silence on a Major Fandom Controversy

Published Aug 18, 2026, 2:05 PM EDT

Criticism focused on everything from the trilogy's wooden, unnatural dialogue to its nonsensical, convoluted storytelling. And unlike the original trilogy, Lucas received more criticism for his scriptwriting on the prequels. As someone who grew up with the prequels, I came to understand the trilogy's flaws with age, even though I still generally enjoyed them. I wasn't the only one who enjoyed those movies, however. McGregor, the actor in Obi-Wan Kenobi, also enjoyed making them, even while acknowledging their controversial beginnings.

Thankfully, McGregor has a way of dealing with the criticism he and the prequels received: the fine art of blocking out the haters.

Image: Lucasfilm Ltd.

"Deciding to do [Star Wars] was hard,” McGregor told the British newspaper, The Independent. “Because at that point I was already doing these [artier] films in the early part of my career. I didn’t think of myself as being somebody in that kind of thing. And then the closer I got to it, the more I wanted to do it. But still, I did them, and they were hard because they’re not indie.”

McGregor's early films include Bill Forsyth's 1994 film Being Human, as well as the 1996 British black comedy Trainspotting. A galactic sci-fi space opera from a franchise as well-loved as Star Wars was incredibly different from what McGregor had done before, and while he had earned international praise for his performance in Trainspotting, the reception of the prequel trilogy was far from as positive.

McGregor initially struggled with the prequels' chilly critical reception, right up until he learned a key lesson: “I did them, and I enjoyed them, and they were not well received. And so that was weird and hard – to sort of put yourself into something like that, and then for them to be really dragged through the mud by the critics. But I learned a lot about not giving a shit."

Image: Lucasfilm Ltd.

Removing yourself from the need for praise and positive acknowledgment is tough for anyone, whether you star in a franchise like Star Wars or not. For McGregor, it was essential, and it was only when he began speaking to fans who had grown up loving the prequels that he realized that the prequels — regardless of whether they were objectively thought of as good or not — were loved after all.

As hated as they may have been at the time, it's undeniable that McGregor's performance as Obi-Wan is one of the best things about the prequels. When McGregor was confirmed to receive his own Disney Plus TV series, Kenobi, following the Jedi Master after Revenge of the Sith, fans were hyped. Whether this shift in tone will eventually carry over to the similarly divisive sequel trilogy and its characters remains to be seen.