John Boyega

IN LIKE FINN

How different did it feel stepping onto this set compared to The Force Awakens?

I stepped onto The Rise Of Skywalker set as if I was stepping into my kitchen to make breakfast. I was full of confidence. You know everybody in the kitchen. The whole family is there. There are good vibes. Great conversation. You know the day is going to be good.

finn’s gone from Stormtrooper to fighting for the Resistance. How does Skywalker move finn’s arc on?

I don’t know if Finn was fully confident about his position in VIII. IX is where you have a Finn that now knows what team he fights for. There’s very interesting beats with Finn in terms of his relations to other characters – there’s an aura around him, a new kind of confident energy. He knows he has skills and the strength to be able to handle things.

Where do we find him at the beginning of the film?

He’s been with Poe a lot. He’s been on missions between films. When we find him, he’s an active member of the Resistance before things start kicking off.

It must be quite a bittersweet moment leaving Star Wars behind?

Yeah, 100 per cent, because you no longer have the consistency with these people who you have genuine friendships with. But it feels oK, because, with just three films, there’s still a curiosity and a mystery about Finn. There are still certain things that I really don’t know about him. It feels like, “oK, cool. It’s a balanced, right time.” But if my name was Daniel Radcliffe right now, I’d be like, “I’ll be playing this guy for years. Yeah! Somebody take this wand!”

Oscar Isaac said of finn and poe’s relationship that, “It’s possible that [Poe] can be attracted to [Finn]… It’s not just a teasing thing.” Is that relationship planned or a natural process?

It all started before everybody knew who Finn and Poe was, in the audition process. They hadn’t cast Poe, so they asked me to do a chemistry read with the two potential Poes they had. But there’s something about oscar and me — we like the same things. We play videogames with each other. We have very transparent conversation. This guy knows me. Like, he knows me. There’s not one thing that I can’t say to him and I’d feel embarrassed or whatever. And that chemistry off-screen – that’s our dream as actors, for the audience to be like, “Yo, these two characters are great together.” Because we have so much. When people saw that, we were like, “Yeah, people can see that we’re actually friends in real life.”JS