Posted in: Movies, Star Wars | Tagged: bbc, john boyega, kathleen kennedy, lucasfilm, poc, racism, star wars

Star Wars: John Boyega Spoke With Lucasfilm About Transparency

Actor John Boyega is by far the most outspoken of the Star Wars cast members when it came to Disney and Lucasfilms' practices, particularly about the franchise's treatment marginalizing POC in an interview with GQ. A Disney exec reached out since, and now so has Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, according to Deadline Hollywood. Boyega told GQ that POC characters weren't given the "nuance" the feature White characters played by Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver were. The actor provided an update with BBC Today while promoting his latest project Small Axe about his "honest" and "transparent" conversation with Kennedy.

John Boyega's Conversation with Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy over Star Wars

"So I got on a phone call with Kathleen Kennedy, and she verbally showed support, and we got to have a really nice, transparent, honest conversation that is beneficial to both of us," Boyega said. "I think these kinds of conversations, you can go into the realm of sounding like you're just trying to save your own career, but what is great now is that it is a conversation that anyone has access to. Now people can express themselves about this knowing that any character we love, especially in these big franchises like the Marvels and Star Wars, we love them because of the moments that they are given, we love them because of those moments, and they're heroic moments that these producers all decide for these characters, so we need to see that in our characters that are maybe black and from other cultures."

The Finn actor originally told GQ the franchise deceptively built up his, Kelly Marie Tran, Naomie Ackie, and Oscar Isaac's characters as equals to Ridley and Driver when it was never really the case in the films. "…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." Small Axe is available to stream on Amazon Prime.

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