But Boyega had already gone through all
this in his own head, already asked himself
all of Abrams’s questions. So he cut the
director off halfway: ‘Thanks, man. I’m in.’
BOYEGA’S NEW MOVIE Detroit is set
during the city’s 1967 riot, the bulk of the
action taking place during one horrible
night in a hotel, when a group of white
police officers tormented a group of young
black men and two white women under the
guise of keeping the city safe. The film
manages to marry the unrelenting tension
of The Hurt Locker with the unrelenting
cruelty of 12 Years a Slave. Boyega plays
Melvin Dismukes, a black security guard
who bore petrified, and mostly paralysed,
witness to the savagery of the police.
Bigelow describes him as being caught
in an ‘impossible situation’ somewhere
between the terrorised and the terrorisers,
unable to help the former by doing
anything more than hoping his presence
would curb the brutality of the latter.
In the movie, Boyega is the naturalistic
foil to the chaos of the violence happening
around him and has what Bigelow calls
a ‘charged strength, a magnificent power
held in check by a fraught political climate’.
It’s a stoic dignity that makes the rest of the
movie seem even more out of control by
contrast. After watching the film, Boyega
told Bigelow, ‘Yeah, I’d probably only be
able to watch this every 10 years.’ Not just
because it’s painful to watch. But because,
as he says, ‘being black, going through what
we’ve been through... the past is still
hanging over our heads’.
WHEN THE STORMTROOPER took
off his helmet in Episode VII, it didn’t just
matter that there was a real person under
there. It mattered that the face you saw
belonged to John Boyega, son of Samson
Adegboyega and Nigeria and Peckham.
‘There are no black people on Game of
Thrones,’ Boyega says. (To be fair, there are,
like, three.) ‘You don’t see one black person
in Lord of the Rings.’ (That is true.) And
though Star Wars had featured a few black
characters – Billy Dee Williams, Samuel L
Jackson as a peripheral Jedi – they were less
represented in the galaxy than Ewoks.
‘I ain’t paying money to always see one
type of person on-screen,’ says Boyega.
‘Because you see different people from
different backgrounds, different cultures,
every day. Even if you’re a racist, you have to
live with that. We can ruffle some feathers.’
GQ MANWhen we watched that first moment of
the Episode VII teaser trailer, we didn’t
see who we were expecting to see. We got
someone who simultaneously understood
his insignificance in the scope of the
multi-billion-dollar franchise he was
inhabiting and could blow up everything
we thought we knew about it. Han Solo is
the obvious choice for that trailer – Ford
is the icon in the movie. But Abrams
reintroduced Star Wars through Boyega
because Boyega’s performance was the
one that defined his movie.
But, yeah, Star Wars is bigger than
Boyega. So are Holly wood and fame.
There’s racism in film, and in the world,
and in Peckham. And obviously nobody
in Holly wood is bigger than Ford or RobertDowney Jr. But Boyega is at peace with his
place in a much larger system – it’s probably
not a coincidence that he’s religious. This
sense of smallness, this humility, brings
him the kind of joy that spurs spontaneous
red-carpet dancing and allows him to hold
the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders.
Boyega struggled to his feet in the desert,
thighs burning as he got his back up and
came into shot. And in that moment, his life
changed. Well, it did and it didn’t. ‘People
were saying that,’ he says. ‘But it truly didn’t
feel that way. It just felt like this would give
me the opportunity. To make stuff happen.
To make my dreams come true.’
To use the film to do it himself. Let Star
Wars be the star of Star Wars. John Boyega
can take it from here.Michael Bastian
Gray Label jacket.
Todd Snyder +
Champion sweatshirt