-Our first guest tonight is a Golden Globe-winning actor
you know from such films as "Moulin Rouge!"
and the "Star Wars" prequels
as well as his Emmy-nominated work in the FX series "Fargo."
He stars in "Christopher Robin", which is in theaters tomorrow.
Let's take a look.
-This place is very big.
Do you live here all alone?
-Just now, yes, but usually, no.
My wife and daughter
are in the countryside for the weekend.
-Well, why -- [ grunts ] -- aren't you with them?
-Well -- [ Sighs ]
-Sticky business.
-I had to say for work.
Why are you here and not in the forest with your friends?
That's the question.
-Well, I couldn't find anybody.
I couldn't find anyone, either.
And I looked for them both --
Hello? -[ Sighs ]
Piglet? Eeyore?
Tigger?
Where is everybody?
-Exactly. Where is Tigger or Kanga or Roo?
-That's why I'm here.
-Please welcome back to the show Ewan McGregor, everyone!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-So lovely to have you back.
-I'm glad to be here. Very nice.
-This is very exciting, you are --
For those who couldn't figure it out from the clip...
-Yeah.
-...you're an adult Christopher Robin.
-Yes. A grown-up Christopher Robin.
-That's very exciting. -Yeah, it's nice.
It's nice to take someone that we know iconically like that,
like, a young -- I've done it the other way.
In the "Star Wars" films, I took an older character,
who was iconic, and tried to play him as a younger man.
And this time, it's the reverse.
-Yeah, that's -- -Yeah.
-You'll have to let me how this one works out for you.
-Yeah, we'll see. We'll see how it goes.
-And, obviously, an incredible amount of CGI in this film.
-Yes. Well, yes.
It's so funny, because I remember it like that.
Like, I remember, we had a little Winnie the Pooh
who was like a Teddy bear.
He wasn't a puppet or he wasn't animated in any way.
-'Cause you couldn't get the real Winnie the Pooh, right?
He turned down the project. -He was too -- Yeah.
-Yeah. -He was too expensive.
-Yeah, of course. -That's the problem.
But we had this little Teddy bear,
and then, a Teddy bear for each of the creatures.
And Marc Forster, our brilliant director,
cast this group of enthusiastic young actors,
most of them just out of drama school,
to play each of the creatures.
So when we were playing a scene,
you know, they would be there with the Teddy bear.
They'd move him around and do the voice
and act with us in the scenes.
And then improvise.
We wanted to go away from the text and improvise.
They would improvise with us, and they were brilliant.
And I got used to his little face,
because he looked just like that.
I mean, it was like acting with a little bear.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-So when I watched the film for the first time, I sort of --
I kept having to remind myself that he wasn't there on the day.
[ Laughter ] -Right, yeah.
-'Cause it's just sort of how I remember it.
And because we know the characters so well,
I could imagine how he might be.
But they did him so beautifully.
-It's really wonderful. And the voice is someone
who voiced him in the 1980 "Winnie the Pooh" cartoons.
-Jim Cummings. -Yeah, which is incredibly nice
to hear such a familiar voice.
It would be weird
if Winnie the Pooh sounded different.
-Someone else, yes. -If he had, like,
a thick New York accent, it would be a huge --
[ Laughter ]
-Or Scottish. -Yeah, Scottish, yeah.
-[ Scottish accent ] Christopher!
Christopher Robin!
-[ Scottish accent ] Get your head out of your ass!
[ Laughter ]
-[ Normal voice ] That was very good.
-[ Normal voice ] Oh, thank you very much.
I can't believe I had the nerve to do my B-minus
Scottish impression in front of you.
-That was really good, yeah.
-But now, you would think a child would be excited
to come on set and see these actors holding these puppets.
But some of the puppets
would maybe freak out a child if they came.
-Yes. We had --
The truth is, we had the beautiful finished product,
the lovely bear to act with.
And it was for the visual effects people
to see what he looked like in the light and everything.
But they couldn't animate him on top of that hairy bear,
so we had -- [ Laughter ]
I just said "hairy bear" on television.
-Yeah. -But we had --
[ Laughter ]
-A lot of people who were, like, in the kitchen
and had totally tuned this out, were like, "Oh!"
-"Wait a minute." [ Laughter ]
So they had a gray --
Just a canvas bear with no hair.
And they, I guess,
they would animate him on top of that gray bear.
But they also sometimes needed one without a head.
So you'd do takes with the gray headless bear.
[ Laughter ]
And then, there was a real horror show one
where it was just his torso -- no arms, legs, or head.
And it was like the Guillermo del Toro version.
[ Laughter ]
And then they had an arm on a stick, a Pooh --
A Pooh on a stick. They had an arm...
[ Laughter ]
...on a stick. [ Laughter and applause ]
And they had his little feet on sticks, as well,
for the little footstep shots and stuff so...
-See, that's all haunting. -Yeah.
-Although, they could use the torso and do a sequel
where Tigger comes and says, "Something awful's happened."
[ Laughter ]
-"I lost my mind. I don't know what I --"
-"I don't know." -"I don't know what I did."
-"I did something. I woke up, I did something!"
[ Laughter ]
Have you read the books? Is that something --
-Yes. I mean, I read them to all my girls.
The first one, anyway.
There's a series of four or five books.
But I'm familiar with the first volume.
And then I'm sure I must have been read it when I was a kid,
'cause I'm so familiar with those stories.
-And then this sort of --
this film takes place post-World War II.
And did the timing of when this was happening
inform how you wanted to play Christopher Robin?
-Yeah. I love that era.
I watched quite a lot film --
I watched a lot of early Alec Guinness films.
There's a great film called "Man in a White Suit"
that I watched. -Mm-hmm.
-And there's a British film I watched,
"From Here to Eternity."
[ Proper British accent ] And anything where everyone
spoke like that. You know.
-Yeah. -"Are you happy, darling?"
"Terribly." That kind of thing.
[ Normal voice ] And there was one film
that was very handy to me.
There's a film called "Genevieve."
-Okay. -Which was about
a vintage car race in the early '50s or late '40s.
And that one was -- the main character in that
is quite like Christopher Robin.
-That's nice that you got to -- that's a very wonderful thing
to be able to do research for your work
that is just, like, watching cool old movies.
-Watching old films. -Yeah.
-'Cause I grew up watching those old films.
And so there's -- I feel like I've been waiting
to play this kind of guy for a long time.
-When you were young and watching films like that,
were other people your age watching films like that?
Because that seems a little... [ Light laughter ]
-I don't think -- Well, I don't know.
On the weekends, on BBC Two, they'd have like matinees
on a Saturday and Sunday, they'd play two old films back to back.
And I would always be propped up on my elbows watching them.
But I don't know. I didn't --
-I do think that I, looking back,
I saw a lot of old films because there was nothing else on.
-Yeah. -And Netflix didn't exist.
-That's right. -Yeah.
-So you'd be like, "You tell me, TV."
[ Laughter ]
-Yeah, "What is it?" -"Yeah, it's up to you."
-"What's it gonna be today?"
Yeah, exactly. No, that's right.