Ewan McGregor Doesn’t Like Saying Iconic Obi-Wan Kenobi Line

This isn’t the reaction you’re looking for: Ewan McGregor doesn’t like greeting strangers with a “hello there!” The iconic line, first spoken by old Ben Kenobi (Alec Guinness) in 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope, is among the most popular memes and GIFs inspired by the Star Wars prequels trilogy. (The younger Obi-Wan, played by McGregor in Episodes I-III, utters the phrase when the Jedi Master drops in on General Grievous in 2005’s Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.) In a new interview, the Obi-Wan Kenobi actor says he resists Jedi mind tricks prompting him to say “hello there!” 

“I do knock out ‘hello there’ every now and again [in private]. I’m asked to say it a lot,” McGregor told Capital FM. “I don’t like to say it if I’m asked to by strangers and stuff on the street, because I think that’s odd.”

He continued, “It’s Alec Guinness, though, he said it first (laughs). I mean, it was his first line in A New Hope, wasn’t it?”

In Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi, premiering with two episodes May 27 on Disney+, McGregor dons his Obi-Wan robes for the first time in 17 years when his former friend and padawan — Anakin Skywalker, the Sith Lord Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) — hunts the Jedi across the galaxy ten years after Revenge of the Sith. 

McGregor, who watched the entire Star Wars saga to prepare for his return to the galaxy far, far away, previously revealed he had to relearn his Obi-Wan voice nearly two decades after Sith. 

“I totally didn’t have his voice. I was just doing this vague, English voice, it sounded like a sort of school teacher or something. But it sadly didn’t sound like Alec Guinness [in A New Hope], and it didn’t sound like Obi-Wan,” McGregor recently told On Demand Entertainment. “It just had been so long, I didn’t have it. But it was quite good that we got to do it and I got to realize that then (laughs). Seven months later, when we came to start shooting, I had done my homework, and I’d listened to a lot of Alec Guinness, and now he’s back.” 

Starring Ewan McGregor, Moses Ingram, Rupert Friend, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Indira Varma, Sung Kang, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Benny Safdie, Kumail Nanjiani, and Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader, Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi is streaming May 27 on Disney+.