Ewan McGregor forgot his Obi-Wan Kenobi voice and had to do months of 'homework' to recover it before his new Disney+ 'Star Wars' show

• Ewan McGregor had to do some homework to find his "Star Wars" voice for "Obi-Wan Kenobi" again.
• McGregor told press when he started doing scenes he realized "it wasn't really Obi-Wan's voice."

The iconic Obi-Wan Kenobi voice doesn't always come naturally to Ewan McGregor. It takes some practice.

During a virtual press conference for the coming Disney+ "Star Wars" series "Obi-Wan Kenobi," which Insider attended, McGregor recalled trying out his Obi-Wan voice while practicing some scenes.

"When we came to do the actual scenes with these other actors I was doing this sort of vague English accent, and it wasn't really Obi-Wan's voice at all, and I was like: 'Oh dear. That's not very good,'" McGregor said.

It's been over a decade since McGregor played the Jedi in 2005's "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith," so he consulted the work of the original Obi-Wan Kenobi actor to nail down the voice.

"Luckily we had months before we actually started shooting, so I went back and did some homework with Alec Guinness and what I've done before in the original films," McGregor said.

Guinness, who died in 2000, played Kenobi in 1977's "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope," which McGregor recalled seeing in theaters as a child.

Disney+'s coming "Obi-Wan Kenobi" takes place a decade after the end of "Revenge of the Sith" as Obi-Wan finds himself on the run from the Empire and Emperor Palpatine, who seeks to execute any remaining Jedi with help from his padawan, Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen), and a group of Inquisitors.

During the press conference, McGregor said it'd meant a lot for him to hear from fans who said they loved the "Star Wars" prequels. When the films first came out they were largely ridiculed by critics and older fans of the franchise.

"One of the difficult things about being in the prequels was that when they came out, they were not seemingly well-received because there was no social media," McGregor said. "There was no sort of direct avenue to the fans at the time, and also the fans were kids."

The creator of "Star Wars," George Lucas, has said he made the films for kids, not for adults.

"It's a film for 12-year-olds," Lucas told fans at 2017's Star Wars Celebration. "You're about to enter the real world. You're 12 years old. You're going to go on into the big world. You're moving away from your parents being the center focus. You're probably scared. You don't know what's going to happen."

McGregor said that he fell in love with the original "Star Wars" trilogy when he was a child and that it had taken years to hear positive feedback from the people who grew up watching the prequel trilogy as kids.

When those kids "grew up a bit and I was able to meet them and I started hearing that people really liked them — they couldn't understand why I thought that they weren't liked when they came out," McGregor said.

"It meant a lot to me," he added. "So, it's really helped. I'm sure it's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this again."

"Obi-Wan Kenobi," also starring Rupert Friend, Joel Edgerton, and Moses Ingram, is scheduled to premiere on Disney+ on May 27.