John Boyega on whether Finn still has a crush on Rey in The Rise of Skywalker
In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, when fugitive stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) first meets scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) he seems pretty smitten, and the story appeared to tease the idea the two could be a couple — from their “stop holding my hand!” meet-cute, to Finn asking Rey if she has a boyfriend, to Han Solo seeing right through Finn to warn “women always figure out the truth,” to Rey giving him a kiss on the forehead.
But in The Last Jedi, the duo was largely kept apart, while a new character, Resistance engineer Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), was introduced, and she gave Finn a smooch after their battle on Crait.
So now here comes The Rise of Skywalker, which picks up after a time jump from the events in The Last Jedi. With the fate of the Resistance at stake, there’s probably not too much time for romance. But is Finn’s Rey crush still even there?
“I don’t feel like it is,” Boyega tells EW. “I don’t know. The Rose-Finn saga, I still don’t know what that is yet. I think for Finn there’s a bit of confusion, as it happens in real life — you’re feeling somebody else more than the other, and things pop up. I think Finn is in a bit of confusion. Despite all the lightsaber stuff and the fate of the world, Finn still is in his early ’20s going on through.”
As for his friendship with Poe (which, yes, is just platonic, as Isaac recently made clear in another interview).
“Oscar and I always wanted more together and [director J.J. Abrams] gave us that opportunity,” Boyega says.”We’ve gone on a lot of missions between the last movie and this one so it’s a real opportunity to show some real chemistry that Oscar and I have in real life, which makes it much more enjoyable for everybody to watch.”
More broadly, Boyega says Finn has evolved from the first two films and is now very focused on the Resistance cause. “He’s after what everybody else is after now,” the actor says. “He doesn’t think just about himself. This is like the final stand and Finn is about defeating the guys in front of him and the very movement that kept him from knowing who he truly is.”
Previously, Boyega made headlines after admitting to leaving a Rise of Skywalker script under his bed where it was found by a cleaning crew and ended up on eBay.
“It was me!” Boyega told GMA. “Let me tell you how this went down. It was actually from my apartment, I was moving apartments, and I left my script under my bed. I’m leaving in the morning and [figured that] when I leave I’ll take it [with me]. But then my boys came over, and we started partying a little bit, and then the script just stayed there. And then a few weeks after, this cleaner comes in, finds the script, and puts it on eBay for like [$84] … But it all worked out in the end.”
The Rise of Skywalker opens Dec. 20.
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