THE GRAVITY OF JOHN BOYEGA

HOW DO YOU RESET YOUR CAREER AFTER LEAVING THE STAR WARS MACHINE? TAKE LOTS AND LOTS OF BIG SWINGS.

- CLOVER HOPE

JOHN BOYEGA WOULD NOT LIE DOWN. IT WAS 2021, AND HE WAS filming an early scene for the blistering sci-fi conspiracy thriller They Cloned Tyrone, which hit theaters this summer. Boyega's street-hustler character, Fontaine, reconvenes with an irritable pimp named Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) and sex worker Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) at her grandmother's house, still reeling from what they just saw (an apparent conspiracy). The script called for Boyega to lie flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling as they talk. Boyega lay there and sucked his teeth.

"Not feelin' it, bruv," the thirty-one-year-old actor told the film's director and co-writer, Juel Taylor, in his charmingly peppery South London accent. "I'm alert, bruv. I'm alert. I'm on edge." Boyega figured Fontaine wouldn't be in a passive position. It didn't feel natural. They filmed him sitting up.

"If he says, "This don't feel right, I'm gonna listen," Taylor explains over the phone. "If you're gonna be a leading man, there has to be some kind of gravity around you, and John definitely has that in spades."