John Boyega is a British-Nigerian actor best known for his role as Finn in the Star Wars franchise, as well as his role in the film Half of a Yellow Sun, based on the novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. He grew up in the Peckham district of London as the son of Nigerian immigrants; his father is a Pentecostal minister and his mother works with disabled people.
Though Star Wars had included a handful of Black actors in previous films, Boyega’s casting as Finn made him the first Black protagonist in the franchise, prompting a slew of racist campaigns by fans and industry professionals to diminish Boyega’s significance in the films. In 2015, fans supportive of Boyega were outraged as the Chinese poster for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ edited the original U.S. poster to shrink Boyega’s figure to be much smaller than his white counterparts. Since the completion of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Boyega has used his platform to speak out about the racism he has faced in his career and about systemic racism at large; he has been particularly vocal about the Black Lives Matter movement.
In March of this year, he announced that his production company, UpperRooms Productions, will be partnering with Netflix to create a series of non-English language films based in Africa. With plans for two films set in Nigeria and one set in Egypt, UpperRooms Productions said that the partnership “will develop film projects based on stories, cast, characters, crew, literary properties, mythology, screenplays and/or other elements in or around African countries,” and will build on Netflix’s growing library of African film and television.