Plus: Boyega has a blunt message for ‘idiots’ fueled by bigotry.
Daisy Ridley and John Boyega are twins.
Both are 23, born only three weeks apart (hes older).
Credit: ERIC RAY DAVIDSON for EW
He plays the conscience-stricken, AWOL stormtrooper Finn, and shes the abandoned, desert scrounger Rey.
MEET REY
Ridley is the youngest of five sisters.
Her father is a photographer and her mother works in communications at a bank.
The Way the World LooksThat’s what J.J. Abrams said he wanted his cast for The Force Awakens to resemble. Rey was conceived as a female protagonist from the get-go, but both she and Finn were written without any specifications to race. Then the filmmakers went searching for actors with a mind toward opening up the galaxy to new faces. Boyega says young Star Wars fans see heroes, not color. “They’re not talking about race the way we grown folks are. They’re not talking about how much melanin is in someone’s skin. That should teach us something. We’ve been having a continuous struggle with idiots, and now we should just force them to understand — this is the new world. There are loads of people of different shades and backgrounds. Get used to it.”.
He was going to be the black guy and I was going to be the girl, she says.
I think neither of those things could ever be a bad thing.
A few less-enlightened types tried to turn it into one.
Cold ConfrontationNow we see there’s a third element to Finn’s snowy, woodlands duel with Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren. Rey is part of the battle, too. We don’t know how she fits in (although this looks a lot like the trailer shot of her weeping over a fallen friend), but as the Darth Vader-obsessed villain ignites the unstable blade of his saber, the untrained Finn is looking pretty unsure of himself. “Obviously that makes things a bit more tricky for Finn,” Boyega says. “That’s genuine fear.”.
Abrams even sent out a message about it prior to the trailer debut.
Its not a burden… Why is your cast so white and male?
Thats what he did.
On the original trilogy, it wasnt just Billy Dee Williams Lando Calrissian who captured his imagination.
We see through the eyes of children that theyre not talking about race the way we grown folks are.
Theyre not talking about color or how much melanin is in someones skin.
That should teach us something, Boyega says.
The bigots trying to sully things?
He has no time for them.
There are loads of people of different shades and backgrounds.
Get used to it.
Both are essentially war orphans.
There was no one really guiding her.
Shes never sat around a table and had a meal with someone else, Ridley says.
She works to feed herself, and she goes to sleep, and she gets up again.
It is a sad life.
When she meets Finn, a fellow discarded person, they activate something in each other.
She has been told shes nothing, and he has been told hes only good for one thing.
He wants to change.
He wants to make a difference.
Hes trying to find some kind of moral dignity in this war.
We get on really well and we make each other laugh.
Sadly, people think a guy and girl cant be friends without something romantic going on.
(Funny, they said the same thing about Luke and Leia once.)
She even got some sage starship-flying advice from Harrison Ford.
I was probably flipping switches too quickly!
There was one other awkward moment.
Um, probably when I sat in his pilot seat, Ridley says.
Theres a shot where I pilot the Falcon by myself.
And then [on another day] Harrison and I went to film together.
And J.J. was sitting there like, Oh my God, oh my God.
And, you know, I moved into the co-pilot seat.
It started in rehearsals.
We had [Kylo Ren actor] Adam Driver.
I had to do all the sound effects and stuff by myself.
In front of the cameras, he was given a much more elaborate prop.
It felt monumental in my hand.
Its absolutely crazy to have in your hand.
Its a bit heavy but its worth it.
He also learned that even in real life, youve got to watch where you swing those things.
It was quite a thing to get used to, Boyega says.
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