NYCC 2023: Ewan McGregor Talks Bagels And Shakespeare – But Nearly No ‘Star Wars’

Ewan McGregor greeted roughly 3,000 people who packed into New York Comic Con’s Javits Center in the only acceptable way, given the occasion.

“Hello there,” he said.

But for Star Wars fans hoping to hear more about the prequels or last year’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+, that was practically the only mention of the venerable series. The actors’ strike precluded McGregor from promoting projects like those.

Instead, with a moderator’s prompting, he discussed all things New York, where the actor lived for a while, as well as his love of music and Shakespeare.

“I’m really happy to be here,’ said McGregor, who was experiencing his first NYCC. “I love being in New York. It’s nice to be here for this.”

While the crowd was largely enthusiastic despite the lack of genre discussion, McGregor earned a rare chorus of boos when he admitted he isn’t fond of bagels. When he asked the crowd what the best kind of bagel is, many shouted back the everything variety.

“Isn’t it a bit like you can’t make your mind up?” he joked.

The actor is a fan of walks around the SoHo and Tribeca neighborhoods as well as the city’s many parks and the West Side Highway. And, of course, he’s partial to the robust theater scene.

“There’s so much culture in New York, isn’t there?” he asked the crowd.

He discussed his time playing Iago in a London production of Shakespeare’s Othello. The part, one of the bard’s biggest, was demanding and he played it in the notoriously tiny Donmar Warehouse, where actors can clearly see nearly patron in the theater.

“In the middle of my soliloquy – Oh, there’s Jude Law!” he said.

He had a similar experience when he realized that legendary Shakespearean director Sir Peter Hall attended a performance. McGregor, who doesn’t deliver the lines as they are written in iambic pentameter, got paranoid very quickly.

Still he hopes to some day revisit the role. And maybe eventually take on the part of his countryman, MacBeth. Though he joked that every time he gets close to doing, and other actor jumps into the part, and he has to wait for a few more years.

I wanted to be an actor since I was 9,” McGregor said. “My uncle Denis Lawson is an actor. He’s always been my hero. And he still is. I’ve always looked up to him.”

Lawson famously played the role of Wedge Antilles in the original Star Wars trilogy – something McGregor was likely forbidden from mentioning because of the strike.