John Boyega confirmed to “Star Wars” fans at Megacon Orlando (via ScreenRant) that he’s spoken to new Lucasfilm boss Dave Filoni, who is now the studio’s chief creative officer and president following the exit of Kathleen Kennedy. The specifics of what Boyega and Filoni spoke about were not revealed. When a fan yelled out to Boyega to “get Dave on the phone” after he was asked about returning to “Star Wars” as Finn, the actor answered: “I actually have, actually.”
Boyega debuted as Finn in 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and reprised the character in 2017’s “The Last Jedi” and 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker.” His role in the trilogy led to online harassment from racist and toxic “Star Wars” fans upset with a Black actor playing one of the leads in the long-running space franchise. Over the years, Boyega has called out both racist fans and Disney. He put the studio on blast for fumbling diversity in his trilogy, pointing to reduced storylines for characters of color and more.
Boyega first aired his “Star Wars” grievances to GQ magazine in 2020, saying at the time: “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.”
“You guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver,” Boyega continued. “But when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know fuck all. So what do you want me to say? What they want you to say is, ‘I enjoyed being a part of it. It was a great experience…’ Nah, nah, nah. I’ll take that deal when it’s a great experience. They gave all the nuance to Adam Driver, all the nuance to Daisy Ridley. Let’s be honest. Daisy knows this. Adam knows this. Everybody knows. I’m not exposing anything.”
Boyega later revealed to THR that a Disney executive reached out to him following his GQ interview. He said he had “a very honest, a very transparent conversation” with the exec and added: “There was a lot of explaining on their end in terms of the way they saw things. They gave me a chance also to explain what my experience was like. I’d hope that me being so open with my career, at this stage, would help the next man, the guy that wants to be the assistant DOP, the guy that wants to be a producer. I hope that the conversation is not such a taboo or elephant in the room now, because someone just came and said it.”
A few years later in 2022, Boyega appeared to distance himself from Finn by telling SiriusXM that “at this point I’m cool off it, I’m good off it” when asked about returning to the “Star Wars” franchise. He added: “Versatility is my path and Finn is at a good confirmation point where you can just enjoy him in other things: the games, the animation. I feel like [Episodes] 7 to 9 was good for me.”
Last year, Boyega appeared in the Apple TV+ original documentary “Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Men in Hollywood” and slammed racist “Star Wars” fans for only accepting Black actors up to a certain point.
“Lemme tell ya, ‘Star Wars’ always had the vibe of being in the most whitest, elite space. It’s a franchise that’s so white that a Black person existing in [it] was something,” Boyega said in the documentary. “You can always tell it’s something when some ‘Star Wars’ fans try to say, ‘Well, we had Lando Calrissian and had Samuel L. Jackson!’ It’s like telling me how many cookie chips are in the cookie dough. It’s like, they just scattered that in there, bro!”
“They’re okay with us playing the best friend, but once we touch their heroes, once we lead, once we trailblaze, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s just a bit too much! They’re pandering,’” the actor added, while also acknowledging that being cast in the franchise was a “fundamental moment” in his career.
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