John Boyega is perfecting his vanishing act. He needs to be outspoken about points that matter to him, however hold folks guessing about who he actually is. He needs to play characters who’re nothing like him, and likewise radically totally different from each other. In his outlandish new sci-fi action-comedy They Cloned Tyrone, he will get to do all of that on the identical time.
Within the Netflix film, debuting July 14, the 31-year-old British actor performs Tyrone Fontaine, a cruel drug vendor, surviving on the imply streets of an unspecified interior metropolis by way of a mixture of indifference and violence. He discovers—alongside a pimp named Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) and a prostitute named Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris)—that they’re all being manipulated by a shadowy group that deploys backup variations of a few of them as a way to hold the group suppressed and destabilized.
Can Tyrone break the cycle? That’s a query Boyega has requested of himself too as he has navigated assorted pressures and expectations after starring because the redemption-seeking Stormtrooper Finn within the Star Wars franchise. He had already made his breakthrough because the neighborhood powerful man Moses within the 2011 alien-invasion comedy Assault the Block, however Star Wars made him a family identify world wide.
In a brand new interview with Self-importance Truthful, Boyega talks concerning the influence of Star Wars on his life, what he sees as the way forward for Finn, and why the sci-fi story he actually needs to revisit in a sequel is Assault the Block. Most of all, Boyega now needs to point out moviegoers and Hollywood energy brokers alike that there’s far more to him than they’ve already seen.
Self-importance Truthful: Let’s begin They Cloned Tyrone. I misplaced monitor of what number of totally different variations of the title character that you simply play.
John Boyega: Yeah, there have been quite a lot of costume modifications.
Inform me how you bought concerned.
It got here to me by way of [my agent] Femi Oguns. He informed me that there was a script that was on the market that everyone was going loopy about. The script had been a significant participant on The Black Checklist. Studios had been bidding on it. I took normal conferences, and all people was mentioning They Cloned Tyrone. “We tried to purchase it.” “We tried to get it.” I am like, Shit, this should be a extremely thrilling venture. Then I heard [Judas and the Black Messiah Oscar-nominee] Charles D. King and his MACRO manufacturing firm had secured it, and that I might be receiving a script quickly —with a suggestion. I simply stated sure. I learn it as soon as and I used to be like, “That is precisely what I am on the lookout for.”
What was it that you simply have been on the lookout for?
Simply versatility, actually. I feel the franchise factor is a present, but it surely has a component of generally securing you in a single function, so folks do not see you as something totally different. Individuals truly assume that is your character and that is who you’re, so you find yourself having to combat towards being a caricature of your self or the character that you simply’re most recognized for. So I used to be type of like, “Let’s go in the other way.”
Reverse of what you’re finest recognized for?
With The Lady King, with Breaking, with They Cloned Tyrone, I wished initiatives the place, if I put the characters beside one another, you might blatantly inform the distinction. That they had totally different character traits, that they had totally different accents, that they had other ways they walked. I wished to train these muscular tissues and present folks what’s up.
Tyrone has a gravity to his character. He is a heavy man, whereas Finn from Star Wars, or Jake Pentecost from Pacific Rim, they are much extra ebullient and light-weight.
Yeah, for positive.
It has been virtually a decade because you signed on to Star Wars. What do you assume 10 years later, trying again at that call?
I feel the nice factor a franchise does is it places you able to be mentioned and thought of for sure kinds of roles, however then it additionally comes with a problem the place you need to diversify. It’s important to have versatility. When the franchise is finished, the query of what you are doing subsequent, what your longevity is, begins to develop into fairly outstanding. And in addition, when it is Star Wars particularly, you wish to not have the Star Wars curse, which is, you aren’t getting to do different roles and are tied to that universe for the remainder of your profession. I feel I used to be simply all the time working towards that notion.
