In an interview with Variety this week, Boyega said studios must get publicly involved in the fight against toxic fandom, explaining, “When one of your actors, especially an actor that’s so prominent in the story, is announced as part of your franchise and then it has a big racial backlash and receives abuse online and that starts to form a shadow on what is supposed to be an amazing gift, it is important for the studios to definitely lend their voice, lend their support to that and to have a sense of solidarity not just in the public eye, but on the ground on set.”
Boyega has been one of the most outspoken actors when it comes to the relationship among studios, major film franchises, and POC actors. Boyega criticized his “Star Wars” trilogy for sidelining characters of color and urged Disney not to promote franchises on the basis of its POC characters and then neglect to give said characters narrative importance. Boyega said his criticisms led to a “very transparent” conversation with a Disney executive about how the studio can do better by its POC actors and characters in the future. As Boyega said to GQ magazine in September, “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.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
