Before landing Star Wars, John Boyega was skint, as the Brits say.
On Saturday, the British actor appeared on a panel at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo where he described how he will "never forget the day" J.J. Abrams wanted to meet up and chat after Boyega had gone on multiple rounds of 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.” In today's market, that is equivalent to around $56 USD.
When he met Abrams, the director was dining in a closed-off area 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 reeling. At that point, he was a decade into his career and had only acted in three feature films. He told the audience that “the moment froze” when Abrams confirmed he had landed the role of Finn, a stormtrooper-gone-rogue 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 co-starred alongside Boyega in the three Star Wars films released between 2015 and 2019. In the years since, Boyega has appeared in 2021’s Naked Singularity, 2022’s Breaking and The Woman King, and 2023’s They Cloned Tyrone.