McGregor and Charley Boorman spoke with ET about their new adventure series, 'The Long Way Up.'
Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman are ready to take viewers on another amazing trip.
The adventurous friends previously chronicled their epic motorcycle expeditions from London to New York in 2004's Long Way Round, and from Scotland to South Africa in 2007's Long Way Down. Now they've reunited for another journey, traveling from the southernmost tip of Argentina up through South and Central America and ending in Los Angeles, for their new Apple TV+ series, Long Way Up.
"When great best friends meet up again, you just kind of pick up from where you left off," Boorman told ET's Ash Crossan of reuniting with his old pal for a new adventure. "We started to talk about old TV shows and what we've done... Ewan really, really wanted to do South America, Central America."
However, the trip almost never happened. In 2016, Boorman was in a devastating motorcycle accident, nearly losing a leg in the grisly aftermath. After 10 operations and years of rehab, he was able to get back on a bike to complete the pair's onscreen trilogy.
"It just shocks you into remembering that there are people in your life that are very important, and you have to remind yourself to just keep that friendship alive," McGregor said of Boorman's accident. "I think we both experienced something by doing our two other trips, Long Way Round and Long Way Down, together that makes our friendship unique in our lives."
"I don't have a relationship with anybody else in the world like I have with Charley, because I went through those journeys riding behind him, in front of him or next to him. We've done that together, so it's sort of a unique bond. It woke me, like, I can't let that slip, and then it led us to this this trip, which is great," he added.
While Long Way Up was a familiar dynamic for the pair, it's also a new adventure, in that they decided to traverse the over-13,000-mile journey entirely on electric motorcycles.
"It was a steep learning curve for us," Boorman admitted. "There's all that range anxiety syndrome that you have when you first go into it, like, will you make it?"
"What was lovely about it, is that you would get to these places, in a youth hostel or a B&B or somewhere, and you say, 'Look, do you mind if we plug in?' and people were absolutely like, 'Yeah, come on in,' and, 'Wow, what a trip!' Suddenly you're not just plugging in your bike but you're plugging into people's lives in a very different way, and that brought on loads of experiences for us," Boorman noted.
One of their more lighthearted experiences is shown in the trailer for the show, where McGregor asks a group of schoolchildren if they're familiar with some of his more well-known work, aka Star Wars. (Spoiler alert: they are not.)
"We were in the top of this tiny little mountain village in Peru, it was amazing," the actor recalled. "We're doing a UNICEF visit in a school that teaches the kids in their indigenous language... It was nice to be up there, but of course, they are living a very different life than ours and they had not seen any of my movies."
McGregor, of course, played Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi in the prequel trilogy of George Lucas' space epic, and will soon be reprising the role in an Obi-Wan-centered series for Disney+.
"Spring next year we start," he revealed of production plans. "I'm really excited about it. It's gonna be great, I think."
And while fans are eagerly awaiting the return of another Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, McGregor noted there aren't any plans, yet, for a second season of Obi-Wan.
"As I understand, it's a standalone season," he said. "We'll see. Who knows?"
As for continuing his other epic trilogy, the Long Way series, McGregor and Boorman joked about needing a new directional-based name, but admit, "there might be a couple in us yet."
"Yeah, there's life in the old dogs there," McGregor said with a laugh.
"There's always Long Way Down Under," Boorman offered, while McGregor pondered a possible "Long Way Scandy."
Long Way Up premieres its first three episodes on Sept. 18 on Apple TV+, with new episodes rolling out weekly.
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