Before hitting it big with Star Wars, John Boyega was totally broke, as the Brits say.
At Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo on Saturday, the British actor shared how he’ll “never forget the day” J.J. Abrams wanted to meet after Boyega had gone through countless auditions for Star Wars.
“I had been auditioning for so long, so I felt like he kind of took away my dignity a little bit,” Boyega told podcast host Josh Horowitz, per People. “So I decided to pretend as if I was busy, you know, when you just pretend that you’re busy. ‘I got other stuff to do, J.J.'”
“He goes, ‘Where are you?’ And I said, ‘I’m at this art show in Greenwich, mate. I’m very, very busy. Where are you?’ He goes, ‘Well, I’m in Mayfair and [at a] restaurant. Need to talk to you now. And we’ll talk about something important.'”
Boyega continued, “And I go, ‘Okay, okay, I’m gonna be right there.’ At the time I had £45 in my account. It took £33 and 83p to get to J.J. Do the math.” That’s roughly $56 USD today.
When he arrived, Abrams was dining in a private section of the restaurant.
“So I go in. Each step I took, I was nervous. I was like, ‘Okay, cool.’ You know, J.J. is a phenomenal, nice guy, and if he was to tell me I didn’t get the part, he would still feed me,” the actor said.
“And so I sat down and, J.J. just said, ‘Thank you so much for coming back. I know we’ve kind of [strained] you with this amount of auditions.’ At that time, I took it upon myself to try and get another audition and go like, ‘J.J., please. Look, I can audition again. I can do British, Scottish, Nigerian, whatever. And he goes, ‘You’re [in Star Wars].’ “
Boyega was stunned. He’d been acting for ten years and had only three feature films under his belt. He told the crowd that “the moment froze” when Abrams confirmed he’d scored the role of Finn, a stormtrooper-turned-rebel in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “Everything felt very surreal,” he added.
“And then this just puts the Star Wars stamp on it: [the movie’s co-writer Lawrence Kasdan] walks out and he said, ‘Kid, this movie’s gonna change your life.’ And that’s the Hollywood shit. You know what I’m saying?”
Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver starred alongside Boyega in the three Star Wars films released between 2015 and 2019. Since then, Boyega has appeared in 2021’s Naked Singularity, 2022’s Breaking and The Woman King, and 2023’s They Cloned Tyrone.
