John Boyega responds to Idris Elba not calling himself a “black actor”
The icon of Disney’s modern Star Wars franchise, John Boyega, has responded to Idris Elba‘s recent comments about being a black actor in contemporary cinema.
Speaking to Esquire, Elba stated: “As humans, we are obsessed with race. And that obsession can really hinder people’s aspirations, hinder people’s growth. Racism should be a topic for discussion, sure. Racism is very real. But from my perspective, it’s only as powerful as you allow it to be. I stopped describing myself as a Black actor when I realised it put me in a box. We’ve got to grow. We’ve got to. Our skin is no more than that: it’s just skin”.
Responding to Elba’s comments, Boyega took to Twitter, writing: “I think we should fixate on who is typecasting and putting actors in boxes because of this. Not on making weird adjustments for them. We continuously focus on what we have to do so they don’t do this or that. Very worrying. We BLACK and that’s that”.
John Boyega has long been vocal in his support for the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020, he appeared at a BLM protest in Hyde Park, where he gave a speech to thousands of people on the streets of London who were protesting in solidarity with other marches in the US following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of US police officers.
The Star Wars and Detroit actor also spoke out against Disney during an interview with GQ, stating that he believed actors of colour had been “pushed to the side”. Continuing, he added: “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”.
Take a look at John Boyega’s full statement on Twitter below.
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