Deborah Chow (‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ director/producer): ‘I’ve never gone through something… so emotional and so profound’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

“I was a genre kid, I was a little goth kid. I was all about sci-fi and fantasy and this was always the pinnacle of everything,” reveals director/producer Deborah Chow about what leading the creative team behind “Obi-Wan Kenobi” meant to her. For our recent webchat she adds, “it definitely felt surreal in moments, for sure. I remember the very first time we were doing a camera test, it wasn’t even the proper costume. But, you know he was in something approximating it, and he walked out, and it was just like, ‘oh, my God, it’s Obi-Wan Kenobi’ and he just sort of fell so seamlessly back into the character,” she says. “They’re so iconic that it is a little crazy to have them standing in front of you. It’s something I’ve never experienced, where you’re working with actors in these huge roles who have portrayed these characters so many years before. And not only that, they’ve been living with these characters in their own lives . There’s such a relationship they have to these characters and they’ve had a 20 year journey with them.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

SEE ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ could win Ewan McGregor an Emmy bookend

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“Obi-Wan Kenobi” stars Emmy winner Ewan McGregor, who reprises his role as the titular Jedi master from the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy. Set 10 years after “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” (2005), in which the Jedi were destroyed by Order 66 and Kenobi’s apprentice Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, it follows Kenobi as he sets out to rescue the kidnapped Princess Leia from the evil Empire, leading to a climactic confrontation and reckoning with Vader. Christensen reprises his role as the iconic dark lord, co-starring alongside Emmy nominee Rupert Friend as the Grand Inquisitor, Galactic Inquisitors Moses Ingram and Sung Kang, Oscar and Emmy nominee Kumail Nanjiani as con-artist Haja Estree, Indira Varma as Imperial officer Tala Durith, Vivien Lyra Blair and Grant Feely as a young Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker, O’Shea Jackson Jr. as Kawlan Roken, Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse reprising their roles as Owen and Beru Lars, Emmy winner Jimmy Smits returning as Bail Organa, Ian McDiarmid back as Vader’s master Emperor Palpatine, and special guest cameos from Oscar nominee Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn and Anthony Daniels as C3PO.

Chow directed all six episodes of the six-episode limited series, culminating in the emotional finale, in which Kenobi confronts Vader alone on a nearby planet after regaining his full connection to the Force, leading to a spectacular lightsaber battle that ends with a tearful Anakin realizing that his apprentice has completely embraced his new identity as Darth Vader. “That scene for me was definitely the heart of the entire show. That’s what we were building to. Everything was moving towards that scene,” she explains. “He’s carrying all this weight, he’s carrying all this guilt, so many things that have come out of ‘Revenge of the Sith,’” she says about Obi-Wan’s journey leading up to this key moment in time. “For us, the natural conclusion is that he’s got to find some release from that, and that is all based on the Anakin and Vader relationship. So that scene was the pivotal scene of the whole series. I’ve worked on a lot of TV shows. I’ve never gone through something like this that felt so emotional and so profound. It’s one thing bringing back these characters, but it was also bringing back these two actors who have their own relationship. It was just incredibly emotional to shoot and to put together and I think it just sort of brought everything together for me.”

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