“I feel being Renton again, he was just waiting inside me to come out.” – Ewan McGregor
Getting the “band back together” for a film sequel after a prolong absence can be difficult. Countless sequels that came after a long hiatus — Dumb and Dumber Too and Zoolander 2 are recent examples — failed to recapture the magic of what made the original films so great. Filmmaker Danny Boyle faced that challenge with this year’s T2 Trainspotting, the sequel to the 1996 original. But perhaps the biggest challenge was the one faced by Ewan McGregor, who had to get back in the skin of Renton, the charismatic lead from the original film. In an interview with Business Insider, McGregor spoke about what was challenging — and what was easy — about returning to the role that had put him on the map.
McGregor explains, “I’ve always thought what it would be like to go back and play some of the other characters I’ve played and I don’t know if there’s any character I’ve played that people feel they know him. That the characters in this movie are people that they know. Danny has said, how many character names do you remember from movies? It’s really rare. But people not only know their names but they know them. So I feel being Renton again, he was just waiting inside me to come out. I worried about if I couldn’t find him and worried about having not lived in Scotland since I was 17 years old and Renton is such a Scottish character, but then Renton hasn’t been in Scotland either. For 20 years. And it all has to do with John Hodge’s writing and Danny’s direction, and suddenly you’re there. It all felt right.”
