Trainspotting: Ewan McGregor admits he had ‘bad sequel’ fears

The actor talks to Sky News on the orange carpet of T2 and says all his doubts were forgotten when he read the script.

Ewan McGregor has told Sky News he was worried about tarnishing the reputation of the original Trainspotting with a bad sequel – but that all his reservations were forgotten after reading the script.

More than 20 years since the original, McGregor and Danny Boyle have walked the orange carpet, in the rain, at the premiere of Trainspotting 2 in Edinburgh.

Writer Irvine Welsh admits he was offered big cash to sell the rights, but he wanted to wait and make sure they reunited all the right people.

McGregor for one thinks they made the right decision.

“I don’t think any of us were in any doubt once we read the script,” he told Sky News at the premiere.

“Before we read it, it was something that was on my mind – you don’t want to make a bad sequel to Trainspotting that would damage its reputation in any way.”

It took two decades to get past arguments and abandoned scripts and arrive at T2, but thanks to Welsh’s patience it has retained all the authenticity of the original.

But with Welsh’s cutting political commentary, this was always going to be more than just a nostalgia trip.

Director Boyle has won an Oscar since the first film came out and masterminded Britain’s Olympic opening ceremony, so perhaps it is no surprise that this film once again looks at Scottish identity and a disaffected youth.

Boyle, who has also made Slumdog Millionaire and Shallow Grave, told Sky News that when you have a dynamic and entertaining story you can “sneak in your agenda and nobody minds”.

He added: “Scotland and its independence and its bipolar relationship with the UK and England is something I’ve benefited from in my career, and you have to behave in a respectful way, they don’t take nonsense here.”

Irvine Welsh, who wrote the books on which the films are based, echoed that sentiment.

“Scotland has become a much more outward-looking and Europe-orientated place – that’s why there’s so much anxiety about Brexit, being taken out of that,” he said. “The film wanted to reflect that growing multi-culturalism as well.”

Welsh’s characters rebel against an establishment they believe gives them nothing and the writer hopes people will see shades of today’s society just as they did last time around.

“Trump and Brexit are ultimately disappointments … the money won’t flow into ordinary people’s pockets, that crushing disappointment is gonna be felt. Government is for the rich, bankers and elites. Until we create alternative institutions it’s all a sham.”

In T2 flashbacks to the original are seen through a Super 8 filter, of the roads these characters have walked down before and the dead ends they’ve arrived at.

Of course, it’s not just the characters who have grown up. So has its audience. To quote one of the lines from the film: we are all now “tourists in our own youth”.

Whether you watch for the social science, the comedy or the cultural swagger, it is a memory rush for an entire generation of Trainspotters.

T2 is out on Friday 27 January.