In Atlanta prepping for Gavin Hood's suspense thriller The Test, in which he'll play a behavioural psychologist confronted by far-right terrorists in a near-future fascist state, John Boyega is a busy, focused man. But he's happily cleared a window in his schedule to talk to Total Film about his career, saying, ‘Love the magazine, I'm looking forward to this…’
It goes both ways and there's much to talk about, starting with Boyega's new film, Breaking, the true story of how Brian Brown-Easley, an ex-Marine working two jobs and living out of a hotel room, walked into a Wells Fargo banks in Marietta, Georgia clutching a note that read: ‘I have a bomb’. All he wanted was the $892.34 owed to him by the Department of Veterans Affairs – without it, he'd be out on the street – and to draw America's attention to how veterans were being shafted by the system they'd served.
‘The coverage was big – there was a lot of media outside the bank – but I did not have any idea about it, so it was definitely a shock,’ the actor says of reading Abi Damaris Corbin's script.
Boyega has a nose for a cracking screenplay. Just turned 31, he's only been on our screens for a dozen years, but boy, has he made an impact. It was, in fact, immediate; his tough, taciturn Moses leading his mates in defending their Brixton tower block from marauding aliens in Joe Cornish's urban sci-fi Attack the Block (2011). Boyega, who'd previously acted on stage and was just a year out of South Thames College with a National Diploma in performing arts, was commanding, charismatic, adored by the camera. Stardom beckoned.
The years since have seen him appear with Kiefer Sutherland in 24: Live Another Day (2014), alongside Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Emma Watson in sci-fi thriller The Circle (2017), and as Jake Pentecost, son of Idris Elba's Stacker Pentecost, in sequel Pacific Rim Uprising (2018). There's also the little matter of Star Wars trilogy The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker (2015-2019), in which his storm trooper Finn deserts the First Order to fight with the Resistance.
proved to be a rocky ride for Boyega – thrilling, naturally, but also marred by racist online abuse and Finn being sidelined as the trilogy unfurled. ‘What I would say to Disney is do not bring out a Black character, market
