- John Boyega has criticized Disney for initially positioning him as a main character in the latest "Star Wars" trilogy only to push him to the side in later films.
- "You get yourself involved in projects and you're not necessarily going to like everything," he said during an interview with GQ magazine. "What I would say to Disney is do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are, and then have them pushed to the side. It's not good. I'll say it straight up."
- Boyega, who played the role of Finn, one of the few Black characters in the "Star Wars" films, was first unveiled to fans as a key player in the new film trilogy but later became a fringe character alongside Kelly Marie Tran — an Asian American.
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The British actor John Boyega has criticized Disney for initially positioning him as a main character in the latest "Star Wars" trilogy only to push him to the side.
"You get yourself involved in projects and you're not necessarily going to like everything," he said during an interview with GQ magazine. "What I would say to Disney is do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are, and then have them pushed to the side. It's not good. I'll say it straight up."
Boyega, who played the role of Finn, one of the few Black characters in the "Star Wars" films, was first unveiled to fans as a key player in the new space trilogy and even picked up his own lightsaber in 2015's "The Force Awakens," but in subsequent films he became a progressively peripheral character alongside Kelly Marie Tran — an Asian American actor who emerged as a leading character in the new trilogy's second film but was largely absent in the third.
"They gave all the nuance to Adam Driver, all the nuance to Daisy Ridley," he said. "Let's be honest. Daisy knows this. Adam knows this. But when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know f--- all."
Both Boyega and Tran's casting proved controversial, with some "Star Wars" fans leveling racist threats to boycott the films rather than watch either actor lead films in the franchise.
"I'm the only cast member who had their own unique experience of that franchise based on their race," Boyega said, adding: "Nobody else in the cast had people saying they were going to boycott the movie because [they were in it]. Nobody else had the uproar and death threats sent to their Instagram DMs and social media, saying, 'Black this and Black that and you shouldn't be a Stormtrooper.' Nobody else had that experience. But yet people are surprised that I'm this way. That's my frustration."
Earlier this year fans and industry colleagues alike hailed Boyega for delivering a rousing speech at a Black Lives Matter protest in London. The video, which has now been shared widely, showed Boyega addressing a crowd of young activists while attempting to hold back tears.
—SymeonBrown (@symeonbrown) June 3, 2020
Speaking about his decision to give the impassioned speech, Boyega told GQ: "I feel like, especially as celebrities, we have to talk through this filter of professionalism and emotional intelligence. Sometimes you just need to be mad. You need to lay down what it is that's on your mind. Sometimes you don't have enough time to play the game."
The 28-year-old actor who has said he is "done" with "Star Wars" is now set to star in Steve McQueen's coming Amazon anthology series "Small Axe" as a Black police officer who joins London's Metropolitan Police with the goal of fighting institutional racism from within the force.
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September 02, 2020 at 05:35PM
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