New franchise addition John Boyega went through an arduous audition process to land his role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but as it was a job that damn near every young actor in Hollywood wanted, it was well worth the trouble. Especially after he read the script the first time and had a rather extreme emotional reaction to what he encountered.
The latest edition of the British version of GQ, which goes on sale tomorrow, has a big profile on the 23-year-old Attack the Block star where he dishes on his time in that far, far away galaxy. When he talked about the first time he read the script, he said:
When I read the script I cried, and I'm not really a big crier... I'm more like a frog-in-the- throat kind of guy, who'll try to hold it in and make sure I don't let it all out.
Boyega has publicly stated on many occasions what a big Star Wars fan he is, and with that in mind, it’s easy to understand his reaction. How many of us, many of whom have never lived in a world without Star Wars, would have this same reaction? Probably quite a few.
Not only was he reading a new Star Wars story that practically no one else had seen, one that features all of the big name original characters coming back for more adventures—that would have given me goose bumps—but he also knew that he was going to get to live out this story with these characters. That has to be a weird, overwhelming feeling to be sure.
With the major levels of security and secrecy surrounding the film—we can only assume that Boyega had to swear some sort of blood oath to J.J. Abrams swearing he wouldn’t reveal anything about the film—we don’t know a whole hell of a lot about Star Wars: The Force Awakens at this juncture.
We do know that John Boyega plays a character named Finn who, according to internet scuttlebutt, is an AWOL stormtrooper who links up with Daisy Ridley’s character Rey on the desert planet Jakku and becomes embroiled in a galaxy-wide quest involving a blue lightsaber that may have been the very one lost by Luke Skywalker when his hand was lopped off at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.
We got our initial look at Finn in the first The Force Awakens trailer, and though he doesn’t reveal much in the way of details, Boyega does give a sense of the character, or at least his impression of the character, in the GQ article. He said:
Finn is dope. His story is so epic. It's a story that's never been seen before, but it also mirrors the stories of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. And he's quirky and charismatic and funny. For me, he was the best character in the script.
That’s an enthusiastic response if I’ve ever heard one. We’ll get the chance to see Finn and the other new characters, and some old favorites, in action for ourselves when Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens on December 18.
