Ewan McGregor on How the Long Way Docuseries Has Literally Changed His Life - IGN Live 2025

The fourth entry in a periodic run of docuseries that began with 2004’s Long Way Round, the current Long Way Home, airing weekly on Apple TV+, once more follows friends Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman as they go on another motorcycle journey together - this time from McGregor’s home in Scotland to Boorman’s home in England, except it’s by way of a rather eventful and time consuming adventurous long route through fifteen countries in total.

At IGN Live today, a brand new clip from the next episode of the series debuted, which you can watch above, showing McGregor and Boorman enjoying a sunny day on the road - something that can still feel refreshing based on where they call home, but particularly so thanks to how much rain the duo have encountered on this particular trip.

In conjunction with IGN Live, McGregor and Boorman spoke to IGN about Long Way Home, with McGregor describing the entire Long Way series as “a very, very important part of my life. The four trips we've done, we couldn't have imagined when we started doing Long Way Round that it would lead to all of the places we've seen and all the people we've met and all of the experiences we've gone through together. I don't think we could have imagined it, but now it's a large part of my life. The Long Way trips have become something really special to me.”

Though he very much agreed with how fulfilling it was, Boorman noted that filming the Long Way series “is always a lot more work than you think when you are doing these jobs. I remember a long time ago, 20 years ago, when we were doing all sorts of training for Long Way Round and we didn't really have a clue what we were doing… and we still are not really that sure about what we do! But this ex-SAS [Special Air Service] guy was saying to us, ‘Charley, if you can get to the start line – and it's so hard to get to that start line – then the adventure part is easy.’ That's the easy part because you've done all the hard work at the beginning to set things up, to get everything going. And that's the truth for anybody who does any journey.”

But while filming the series is technically a professional job, since the footage ultimately airs on TV, McGregor noted that compared to his film and TV roles, “It’s a different thing. It doesn't, to me, feel like part of my acting work. It's not. It's a different thing that I do and I love it. I love it very much.”

Boorman added that as much as they do their best to prepare, especially having done this so many times now, they can still be thrown for a loop, noting that when they began Long Way Home, “We hadn't ridden together for a little while and we left Ewan’s house and we went down the road and we had these old bikes and we looked great. We had all the gear on that you want, and we got down to the end of his driveway and it started to rain and we had all the wrong clothes on, and we were putting on all these waterproofs. And Ewan looked at me and he said, ‘Charlie, we've been doing this for 20 years… You would've thought we'd learn something!’ But off we went and it rained for four weeks.”

Asked about locations from the four series that particularly stand out, both men mentioned Mongolia from their first trip in Long Way Round as particularly impactful, with Boorman stating, “Mongolia was an extraordinary place that kind of tested us on every level.”

McGregor has an especially deep and personal connection to their time in Mongolia, recounting to IGN how they had a particularly tough time there initially thanks to a variety of reasons related to weather, terrain and more, which began to fill them with frustration. “It was wet and muddy and we were really doing like 14, 15 miles a day or something when we were used to doing many more than that.”

Because of that, he and Boorman were highly considering detouring down a road to the left into the nearby Russia instead of staying in Mongolia and called one of the show’s creators and producers, David Alexanian, to tell him their new plan. Recalled McGregor, “David sort of talked me out of it. He said, ‘Look, don't bail out of Mongolia just because it's hard. This place is amazing.’”

Because of Alexanian’s convincing words, McGregor and Boorman continued on to Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, and McGregor recalled, “When we were there, we had a UNICEF visit with kids who live in the streets and in the winter they live underground near to the heating pipes because it's so cold there. And the next day we went to this identification center where these kids, when the police find them, they take them to this place. And we met a little girl there who is called Jamyan, who became my daughter. I adopted her with my ex-wife, Eve.”

Remarked McGregor, “If we had turned left, I never would've met her. And her life and our lives would all have been very, very different. And so it's a funny moment to be able to look back in time and go, ‘Jesus, that one choice to go left or straight on really affected our lives.’”

Unlike some actors who might want to keep a distinct separation between the roles they’ve played and something like Long Way Home, where they are being filmed as themselves, McGregor is able to easily have fun with his cinematic history during his travels - at one point pretending to use the Force to open an elevator door.

McGregor laughed that he really doesn’t give it that much thought, remarking, “It's something that's difficult to not do when there's an automatic door. It's just like a tick.”

New episodes of Long Way Home debut Fridays on Apple TV+.