John Boyega has dispelled rumours about a Marvel film, showing his support for indie films. The actor disclosed one of his most significant careers turning points: a conversation with fellow Brit and Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya.
“I invited Daniel Kaluuya to my house because I was thinking about a lot of stuff. We had a sit-down, and I told him everything about how I felt,” Boyega recalled to The Daily Beast about the time he spent “reassessing all aspects” of his career during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
“And it was so simple, the way he reacted,” Boyega continued of “Get Out” and “Nope” star Kaluuya. “He was like, ‘Yeah. You need to prioritize the work, and work with people that actually fuck with you.’ With creative collaborations, we have to find people who are on our wavelength and then we create something good for our audience. That was one of the voices where I was like, OK, this is what I’m going to do.”
Boyega has frequently thought about his lasting impact as Finn in the “Star Wars” Skywalker trilogies, a difficult topic given that he spoke out the character’s racist portrayal and the actor’s diminished presence throughout the trilogy in 2020. When so-called fans vowed to boycott the movies because he was cast as a Stormtrooper after beating out Tom Holland for the role, Boyega looked back on his time in the franchise as the moment he learned he was “in an industry that wasn’t even ready for me.”
“For me, it was just the differences,” Boyega told Daily Beast of his “Star Wars” stint. “I always try to take away the lesson of, ‘That was different. But never again.’”
Boyega stated that the conversation with Kaluuya “spiralled off into different ventures” in terms of creativity unrelated to franchise IPs.
“Breaking’ certainly happened during the pandemic. In ‘The Woman King’ I play a king who’s protected by some of the most ruthless female warriors out there. And for me, it was realizing, ‘Oh, I’m the guy they call when they need versatility in their projects, and I need to lean into that a little bit more,” Boyega said.
“They’ve come out and been like, ‘Let’s go work,’” Boyega said.
Boyega listed a number of actors and directors as his “allies” in the business, in addition to Kaluuya, including Jamie Foxx, Olivia Washington, Joe Cornish, Juel Taylor, “The Woman King” co-star Viola Davis and director Gina Prince-Bythewood, “Breaking” director Abi Damaris Corbin, and co-stars Kwame Kwei-Armah, Michael K. Williams, and Nicole Beharie.
But Boyega simply cannot escape one Marvel parallel: “For me, that synergy and now identifying the people who are like, ‘We agree,’ is in my head like that last portal scene in [‘Avengers’] ‘Endgame’ where they’re coming out on your left.”