Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in English
Joyn Boyega appeared at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (via People) and revealed he only had about $60 in his bank account when J.J. Abrams called him to meet about his “Star Wars” casting. The actor then had to spend around $43 dollars on the trip to meet Abrams, meaning Boyega more or less had $17 dollars in his account when he got the confirmation that he’d be starring as Finn in “The Force Awakens.”
“I had been auditioning for so long, so I felt like he kind of took away my dignity a little bit,” Boyega said about getting the call from Abrams. “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.’ 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.”
“So I go in. Each step I took, I was nervous,” Boyega continued. “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. 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”].’”
The actor said “the moment froze” when he heard the news. “Like I even noticed how many sugar cubes were in this very crush little cup that was on the table. 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?”
Boyega debuted as Finn in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which grossed more than $2 billion at the worldwide box office. He reprised the character in “The Last Jedi” and “The Rise of Skywalker,” both of which crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide. His role in the sequel trilogy led to online harassment from racist “Star Wars” fans upset with a Black actor playing a lead hero in the space franchise. Boyega told GQ magazine in 2020 that Disney fumbled diversity in his movies.
“What I would say to Disney is do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up,” Boyega said at the time. “You guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver. But when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know fuck all… 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.”
Boyega made headlines last month for his appearance in the Apple TV+ documentary “Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Men in Hollywood,” where he continued to open up about his “Star Wars” experience.
“Lemme tell ya, ‘Star Wars’ always had the vibe of being in the most whitest, elite space. It’s a franchise that’s so white that a Black person existing in [it] was something,” Boyega said in the documentary. “You can always tell it’s something when some ‘Star Wars’ fans try to say, ‘Well, we had Lando Calrissian and had Samuel L. Jackson!’ It’s like telling me how many cookie chips are in the cookie dough. It’s like, they just scattered that in there, bro!”
“They’re okay with us playing the best friend, but once we touch their heroes, once we lead, once we trailblaze, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s just a bit too much! They’re pandering,’” the actor added, while also acknowledging that being cast in the franchise was a “fundamental moment” in his career.
