Whatever Happened To John Boyega After Star Wars?
When an actor takes the lead in a big iconic franchise early in their career, there's always a risk of being typecast as the character that made them famous. Just look at how Mark Hamill struggled to be taken seriously in live-action as anyone other than Luke Skywalker — though Hamill did find a successful niche in voice acting for animation. The young cast of the "Star Wars" sequel trilogy is navigating similar waters.
Fortunately, John Boyega seems well-positioned to escape the fate of forever being typecast as Finn from "Star Wars," thanks to both his talent and his sheer drive to create opportunities for himself. This is all the more impressive considering the struggles he's faced in the film industry, including noted disagreements with the arc of the sequel trilogy and concerns about systemic racism. Looking at Boyega's filmography in the years since the release of 2019's "Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker," he's been delivering great performances across a variety of genres in films such as "The Woman King," and "They Cloned Tyrone." Whether or not he ever returns to the "Star Wars" universe remains to be seen, but it's clear that his career is heading in the right direction whatever happens.
John Boyega's career pre-Star Wars
John Boyega trained at the Identity School of Acting in London, where his classmates included other future stars such as Letitia Wright. In 2009, he appeared in four British stage productions: the National Theatre's "Six Parties" and the Kiln Theatre's "Category B," "Seize the Day," and "Detaining Justice."
His film debut was in the leading role of the 2011 sci-fi action-comedy "Attack the Block." Boyega's performance as Moses, a South London hoodlum who becomes an unlikely hero by defending Earth from man-eating aliens, was the type of performance that could have made him an instant star had "Attack the Block" had a bigger platform.
The next few years were somewhat quiet for Boyega's career, appearing in the indie films "Half of a Yellow Sun" and "Imperial Dreams" while taking smaller roles in TV shows like "Becoming Human" and "24: Live Another Day." Then, in April 2014, Boyega was thrust into the spotlight when he was announced as part of the cast for the highly anticipated "Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens."
His criticisms of how the sequel trilogy played out
John Boyega has not held back from discussing his issues with how the "Star Wars" sequel trilogy turned out. After being the co-lead of "The Force Awakens," his character of Finn was relegated to a side quest on the casino planet Canto Bight in "Star Wars: Episode XIII – The Last Jedi." In an interview with GQ in 2020, he said Disney didn't know what to do with characters of color, while white characters like Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) got the majority of the focus and — in his words — "all the nuance." Speaking on The Hot Ones in 2023, he ranked "The Last Jedi" as his least favorite of the trilogy.
As for "The Rise of Skywalker," Boyega ranks it as an improvement over "The Last Jedi" and has praised the experience of working with director J.J. Abrams, but still had disappointments with how the film turned out. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2022, he expressed excitement about Colin Trevorrow's original plans for "Episode IX" (then titled "Duel of the Fates") and heartbreak over the fact his story — involving Finn inspiring a full-blown rebellion of his former Stormtroopers — didn't make it into the final film.
He feared BLM activism would end his career
In June 2020, massive Black Lives Matter demonstrations took place around the world in response to the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. At one of these rallies in London, John Boyega gave a passionate speech talking about experiences of systemic racism and the many victims of police violence. Taking a stand at this moment was important enough that he was willing to do so even with fears it could impact his career. "I don't know if I'm going to have a career after this," he told the crowd, "but f*** that." (via The Hollywood Reporter)
Fortunately, the film industry's public response to Boyega's activism was one of congratulation rather than one of rejection. The official "Star Wars" X, formerly known as Twitter account posted that they "stand with and support" John Boyega. This was a statement that many found hollow given how Disney failed to fully defend Boyega and other "Star Wars" actors from racist backlash, but the studio's more immediate defense of Moses Ingram does indicate improvement on that front. Filmmakers and writers including Jordan Peele, Olivia Wilde, Charlie Brooker, and J.J. Abrams all voiced support for Boyega and expressed interest in working with him in the future.
Small Axe was his first post-Star Wars role
John Boyega's first acting role after "The Rise of Skywalker" was in "Red, White and Blue," the third installment of director Steve McQueen's five-part "Small Axe" series. Co-produced by BBC and Amazon Studios, "Small Axe" consisted of five feature-length dramas (critics were split on whether to count them as movies or a TV miniseries, though they loved them either way) about the West Indian immigrant community in London between the 1960s and 1980s.
In "Red, White and Blue," Boyega plays Leroy Logan, a research scientist who joins the Metropolitan Police in the '80s, hoping to reform the institution from within while facing opposition from both racist co-workers and peers who feel his efforts are all for naught. Connections can be drawn between Boyega's powerful performance — which won Golden Globe and Critics Choice Awards — with both his "Star Wars" experience and his subsequent activism. In an interview with The Wrap, McQueen directly compared the two saying, "John is literally the poster boy for 'Star Wars.' Leroy was literally the poster boy for the Metropolitan Police to recruit minority police officers. And what happens is those same institutions disappoint them."
He left Netflix's Rebel Ridge for family reasons
In November 2019, right before the release of "The Rise of Skywalker," it was announced that John Boyega had been cast in the leading role in "Rebel Ridge," a Netflix thriller by "Green Room" director Jeremy Saulnier. However, the production was delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in June 2021, only a month after filming finally began, Boyega exited the shoot. A Netflix spokesperson told Deadline, "'Rebel Ridge' is pausing temporarily as we look to re-cast John Boyega who needed to leave the project for family reasons. We remain committed to Jeremy Saulnier's extraordinary film and look forward to resuming production."
According to The Hollywood Reporter, there were rumors that Boyega left the set without alerting anyone and that he left due to having many issues with the script, but his agent Femi Oguns stated that these rumors were false. "Rebel Ridge" resumed and completed filming in 2022 with Aaron Pierre taking over the role from Boyega.
Starting the UpperRoom production company
John Boyega doesn't only act in movies and TV shows but has started to get into producing them himself via his company UpperRoom Productions. He started UpperRoom while he was still involved with the "Star Wars" sequel trilogy, using it to produce 2018's "Pacific Rim: Uprising." Since "Star Wars," however, Boyega's company has become a lot more active in making deals and putting projects from various mediums into development.
So far, UpperRoom has produced the independent film "Breaking" and the sci-fi podcast "Tomorrow's Monsters," wherein Boyega voiced the conman Jack Locke. A British fantasy horror film titled "A Spriggan" and a South African crime thriller titled "God is Good" were also picked up as UpperRoom projects, but the lack of news on those projects — announced in 2018 and 2019 respectively — raises the question of whether they were casualties of the pandemic or fell apart for other reasons. The company made a deal with Netflix in 2020 to develop African films and a deal with ViacomCBS's VIS Kids in 2021 to develop animated projects.
Naked Singularity flopped
While "Small Axe: Red, White and Blue" was an outstanding start to John Boyega's post-"Star Wars" acting career, his first theatrically-released film of this era was decidedly less successful. The 2021 film "Naked Singularity," based on the novel "A Naked Singularity" by Sergio de la Pava, stars Boyega as Casi, a frustrated public defender who gets dragged into a violent drug heist by a former client (Olivia Cooke).
Given an extremely limited release in theaters before being widely ignored as a video-on-demand title, this eccentric hybrid of courtroom drama, dark comedy, and science fiction failed to impress critics. No amount of charisma from the cast could remedy the weak script. "The prospect of John Boyega playing an idealistic New York public defender in a John Grisham-style thriller is a very appealing one," wrote Cath Clarke in her review for The Guardian. "But his talent deserves better than this clapped-out vehicle, a movie that constantly feels like it's about to run out of narrative gas."
Breaking earned Boyega praise at Sundance
"Breaking," John Boyega's next starring role after "Naked Singularity" and his second producing credit fared a lot better with critics even as it struggled to find a wide audience. Premiering at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival under the title of "892," the true crime film from director Abi Damaris Corbin won a special jury award for its ensemble cast, which notably included one of the final performances by the late Michael K. Williams.
The number in the original title refers to the exact dollar amount that Brian Easley (Boyega) was owed by the Department of Veterans Affairs — and the amount he tried to rob from a bank. A hostage negotiator, fictionalized in the film under the name Eli Bernard (Williams), worked to defuse the situation, but Easley was nonetheless shot and killed by the police. This tragic true story showcases how the United States has failed its veterans and those struggling with mental illness. Critics praised the performances more than the script but found it a solid enough thriller to recommend, with Rotten Tomatoes' critic's consensus summarizing, "'Breaking' struggles to effectively convey its messages, but its noble intentions are well served by John Boyega's electrifying performance."
The Woman King was a post-Star Wars hit
By a sizable margin, the John Boyega film that most people have seen since "The Rise of Skywalker" is the 2022 war film "The Woman King." Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, "The Woman King" gives the Hollywood epic treatment to the West African kingdom of Dahomey and its all-female Agojie army — one of the historical inspirations for the Dora Milage in "Black Panther."
In the film, Boyega plays King Ghezo, who declares war on the Oyo Empire to liberate Dahomean women from slavery and bestows the Agojie general Nanisca (Viola Davis) with the title of "Woman King." The Dahomey having its own involvement in the slave trade is a source of conflict — with Boyega's fictionalized Ghezo ending up a lot more progressive than the real one was. Huge historical inaccuracies aside, "The Woman King" was well-loved by both critics and general audiences.
Boyega shared his hopes for the film's influence with BuzzFeed saying, "Hopefully, we make some money and the movie gets enough traction so that producers are inspired to purchase, develop, and green-light more stories like this."
They Cloned Tyrone proved popular on Netflix
While "The Woman King" is John Boyega's biggest theatrical hit post-"Star Wars," the straight-to-streaming Juel Taylor-directed sci-fi blaxploitation throwback "They Cloned Tyrone" may be equally, if not more successful. While hard viewership stats are hard to find, Netflix reported roughly 21 million views worldwide over its first three weeks on the service.
While the Netflix algorithm can push a lot of mediocre movies to surprisingly high viewing numbers, this isn't one of them, and "They Cloned Tyrone" is among the best-reviewed films of 2023. Starring alongside Jamie Foxx and Teyonna Paris, Boyega plays the drug dealer, Fontaine, along with several other characters whose roles constitute spoilers. With a story that delves deep into conspiracy theories, the movie cleverly plays with stereotypes and delivers social commentary amidst stylized entertainment.
Clarissa Loughrey of The Independent wrote in her review, "It's Boyega who drives home the dual nature of Taylor's film. 'They Cloned Tyrone' is funny, yes. It's stylish, certainly. But there's a real streak of despair here that the actor captures in every earnest, angry scene of Fontaine alone in his helplessness." In an NPR interview recorded just before the SAG-AFTRA strike, Boyega discussed this balance of silliness and seriousness, saying "the goal is to just, you know, feel the character so that people actually get the joke."
Plans for an Attack the Block sequel
Even with all the great movies John Boyega has been in over the past 12 years, you can still make a serious case that his first film, "Attack the Block," is the best of the bunch. It was a pleasant surprise, then, to see the news in 2021 that Boyega's UpperRoom Productions had officially announced "Attack the Block 2" with writer-director Joe Cornish returning. In the announcement article in Deadline, Boyega said, "I'm excited to see this heightened story return to the streets of London. Moses has remained one of my favorite characters to play and bringing him back is a huge honor."
Cornish offered Deadline an update on the project in 2023 while doing press for his Netflix series "Lockwood & Co." "The first 'Attack the Block' was made in complete secrecy so we had time to make it as good as it needed to be," he said. "We're now in the middle of that process. John and I have a really detailed outline and are doing the research to figure out the reality that we then merge with sci-fi fantasy ... It's a co-production and we're going to take our time to get it exactly right."
Would he ever return to Star Wars?
With all the work John Boyega has put into building a career beyond "Star Wars," the question remains if is there any chance he would return to the galaxy far, far away. He's gone back and forth on this matter a lot. In 2020, speaking to Jake's Takes, he said that if he was offered the chance to appear in another "Star Wars" movie 30 years down the line, he'd be open to having the conversation so long as he had more input on the story and was able to work again with Kathleen Kennedy and J.J. Abrams.
In 2022, however, the answer he gave on SiriussXM's "Tell Me Everything with John Fugelsang" was a resounding no. "I think Finn is at a good confirmation point where you can just enjoy him in other things, the games, the animation," Boyega said of his character's story.
Less than a year later, Boyega once again changed his tune, telling TechRadar, "I'm open to all characters and scripts that are enjoyable, have a great cast attached, and a terrific director. So yeah, I'm open to all opportunities." With the announcement of a new "Star Wars" film centered around Daisy Ridley's Rey in development, there's been much speculation about her sequel trilogy co-stars getting a chance to return as well — it remains to be seen if Boyega will be among them.