-Ewan, it is -- ah, look at you, buddy.
You look great. -How are you?
-It's good to see you. -I am happy to see you.
-Where were you when everything shut down?
Were you working on anything at the time?
-I was in New York.
I was working on the series called "Halston."
And I'd been in New York. We'd shot about one episode
out of five, and bits of two or three.
So we were less than halfway through it.
-Oh. -And then, you know,
we were shooting and we were hearing all this talk
on set about other films being shut down.
And we're thinking, "Why are we not being shut down?
What -- what --"
And then of course, it came one Friday.
They shut us down -- literally.
But we thought, at that stage,
it was going to be for two or three weeks.
-I totally agree. Yeah.
-You know, it's like two, three weeks, go home.
So I just left a bunch of my stuff in New York
and I flew back here to L.A.,
and here we are six months later.
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
-What kind of things you been doing while you've been home?
-Well, you know, I've just been keeping busy, dude.
I did a whole bunch of stuff that I've been meaning to do
around the place, like things that you go, "I'll get to that,"
picking up a tree that fell over
or I lost a trailer down the hill.
I had to get -- I towed that out.
Things that have been on my to-do list for years.
You know, played a lot of guitar.
I actually -- I found you playing "Render" with Blur
on the interwebs.
-You saw that? -Oh, my God.
I watched it over and over. It's so good.
-How great are -- I just asked them to do it.
They were here and I go, "I love 'Tender' so much.
Do you want to --"
How did you stumble on that one? -I don't know.
I was just trying to learn the chords for it.
And I was looking on YouTube to see -- you know,
I was watching them play it, and then I saw you guys.
I was thinking, "Wait a minute." So looked at it,
and then I kept watching you over and over.
Just -- what I loved about it
is you just looked like you were having so much fun.
It was the best.
-It was great -- -Your were playing with Blur.
-If you look at Damon's face,
he starts laughing because he's looking at
how much fun I am having.
And I'm hitting harmonies and stuff, he's like --
-You're doing the high stuff. You were so into it.
-I'm trying and he's laughing at me.
-[ Speaks indistinctly ] -[ Laughing ]
Oh, that's great, man. -It's so cool.
-We got to do -- -It's so cool.
-We got to do a duet when you come back.
-Oh, I'd love that. I'd love to --
Any excuse, really, to get the guitar out.
You know, I'd love it. -Yeah.
-Last time you were here, you'd just finished
a motorcycle trip with your buddy, Charley.
-Charley. Yeah. Yeah. -Now it's a series
on Apple TV+.
"Long Way Up," it debuts Friday.
What can we expect for this?
-We did a couple of other big trips in the past
called "Long Way Round" and "Long Way Down."
And we -- in 2004, we rode from London
all the way around to New York, east.
-I remember, yeah. -And that was epic.
And then we did the African continent
from the top of Scotland to Cape-Town in 2007.
And, you know, there's been this long gap in between,
but we always planned to do the Americas.
And so we started, we -- we did an odd --
we prepped it al in L.A. and London
and then shipped everything down to Ushuaia
in the bottom of Tierra del Fuego to start,
which was such a --
We had to come a long way up, you know,
'cause we'd already done "Long Way Down."
The common sense thing would be to leave L.A. and ride south,
but 'cause we had to call it "Long Way Up,"
we had to start down there. -Down, and go up.
-Then we shipped everything down there
and we rolled all the way back up to L.A., and it was amazing.
And we did it all on electric motorcycles.
We decided to try and do this one on electric bikes.
And Harley-Davidson took their beautiful
LiveWire motorcycle and built
these two prototypes into sort of adventure bikes for us.
They raised the suspension,
or they lengthened the suspension,
they raised the bikes.
Put different seats on and panniers
and a screen and we had these proper dual sports bikes.
It was wicked.
-You said that this was the most challenging
motorcycle trip that you've ever done.
What was one of the more challenging part of it?
-I think the challenge was the charging of the bikes.
You know, we're in the cusp of,
I know, electric cars are everywhere.
There are electric charging stations for cars
in most cities.
Especially in America, it's quite easy to do,
to navigate.
But in the Atacama Desert
or Patagonia, for instance,
there aren't any charging stations...
-Of course. -...so we had to sort of
do the best we could.
It was pretty stressful, the charging.
But it added a certain excitement to the trip,
a different kind of adventure, you know.
It was good.
-How do you like electric versus gas powered?
-I love it. I love -- I love riding them.
They're really fast. I mean, they're --
Away from the lights, they are so much faster
than a petrol bike, and... -Really?
-They're just -- they're sort of --
For a touring bike, they're quite nice
'cause they don't make any noise,
and there's no mechanical vibrations,
so you really feel the road.
There's sort of a -- sort of tranquility
to riding them, which is nice.
You ride them a bit slower because
you got to try and get the most miles
out of the battery as you can.
-Yeah. -And so you don't want to be
setting at 90 miles an hour,
but that lends itself for touring anyway.
You want to be able to take in the landscape
and look at the llamas as you go by, you know?
And also, the llamas don't run away.
So when you come up on a petrol bike
to horses or some wildlife, they scatter.
But when you come up on an electric bike
to the llamas, they just sort of check you out.
They don't run off.
-I wouldn't even think of that. You're right.
I remember I was lucky enough to go on a hot-air balloon
ride... -Yeah.
-...in Africa,
and when we went over the animals, you're just floating,
and it's quiet, so the animals
don't even really know you're there.
They just think you're a bird, so you're just like,
"Oh, my goodness, this is unbelievable."
-Amazing. -So that's probably
kind of the same thing -- it's not as loud,
so once they do -- [ Imitates grinding ]
...then they ran and they go...
-Yeah. -Then you're like, alright.
Then it wasn't as peaceful.
Hot-air ballooning's not as peaceful as everyone says it is.
-The landings aren't quite as peaceful as --
The landings are pretty terrifying.
-Dude, it was awful. -Sort of like --
It's so hit-and-miss, isn't it?
It's sort of like, well, I hope it's gonna be okay.
-Yeah, we're all tumbling out of a basket.
I go, "This is not how I want to go."
-Dragged across the Savanna being chased by leopards.
-[ Laughs ] -Oh, my God.
[ Laughter ]
-That must have unbelievable just listening to the tire
on the road, and just going,
"We're going, man, we're cruising."
-Yeah, I mean, we got down there,
and we're not very good --
we're not very clever at planning, Charley and I.
We like looking at bikes and picture--
You know, we love buying the kit,
getting the right panniers and the right gloves
and the right gloves and -- -Yeah.
-That's what we're really into, all the kit,
you know, the stuff.
But the actual planning of the trip,
we're a bit lame at, so we go down there
to Tierra del Fuego, and it was a blizzard,
and we were snowed in for four days
before we could leave, 'cause it was still winter.
And I spoke to my dad on the phone, he was like,
"Well, you might have looked at the weather
before you left, son," you know.
I'm thinking, yeah, he's got a point.
I should have had a look at the weather
because it was blizzard conditions.
-You're like, "I'm too busy thinking of the bike
and the gloves and thing and the --" yeah.
-"I got really nice panniers, Dad, look at my panniers."
But... [ Laughter ]
But we waited for a break in the weather,
and on the fifth day it stopped snowing a bit,
and we just left, we just got out on the road.
It was fun.
-I want to show everyone a clip.
Here is a look at "Long Way Up"
on Apple TV+, check it out.
-Got to hold on through your pillar.
I once was in a taxi cab in New York,
and a Hell's Angel came up to the car like this,
put his hand through the window and he said,
"Take me to the Hell's Angels club."
Taxi guy was like, "Okay."
Put your rear window down and I'll hold on through there.
Go slowly. Okay, slowly.
-Hold the other way, maybe, Ewan.
-No, I'm good, I got it. -You got it?
-Yeah.
Slowly, slowly. That's it, good.
-Okay. -Good.
-...faster? -Yeah, go a bit faster.
Ooh, yeah, that's good.
Good, good, good.
This is working, it's working.