John Boyega never imagined himself as a Madame Tussauds waxwork. It wasn’t something that he had necessarily aspired to, but when the call came in, he said yes before his agent, Femi Oguns, could finish the sentence. “I just thought, they are making them look so accurate now,” he says. A waxwork is something of a crowning moment, too. He announced the news on his 30th birthday on Instagram, and the influx of comments he received confirmed that to be rendered in wax was a sign that you’d made it. “People were like, ‘Yo, this is big,’” he says. “Just being in the room. The standard of people. Tom Hardy. George Clooney. It feels good.”

So good in fact, that Boyega has been to see his waxwork in progress several times. Initially, he was worried about Tussauds getting his hairline wrong. “But to be honest, I was really confident after I saw Stormzy’s one.” Once finished, he invited family, friends, fellow church members (his father, Samson, is a Pentecostal minister) and people from the Peckham estate where he grew up to see it. His dad was full of pride. His sisters, Grace and Blessing, gave him a reality check. “Now you can see how big your head is,” he mimics, in a high-pitched voice.

I meet Boyega at Tussauds for another viewing, and we stand in the museum’s studio which is lined with equipment, severed limbs and an out-of-action Jimi Hendrix (his thumb having been accidentally snapped off by a member of the public). Boyega charmingly banters with the museum staff and beams as he stands next to his waxwork which is dressed in a black suit, a red and black printed cloth draped across his shoulder – all designed by his sister Grace – plus Boyega’s “Sunday best” shoes that he donated and a diamond ring. (The real Boyega is more casually dressed in a red H&M sweater, Versace trainers and his favourite sentimental jewellery). The waxwork’s stance is proud, gaze sturdy, shoulders back. It’s the posture of a lion. “Me striding, that’s the kind of pose I wanted to be in.”

It’s surreal how realistic it looks, but seeing mannequins of himself is all in a day’s work for Boyega. In his new film They Cloned Tyrone, alongside Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris, Boyega plays Fontaine, a neighbourhood drug dealer, who is shot dead but wakes up alive the next day. He and his friends look into the incident and discover a government conspiracy. “We all had a good few different ‘clones’,” he says. “We would come on set and there would be random John Boyega and Jamie Foxx models. Naked.”

The film, from director Juel Taylor, is one of several new projects involving Boyega out soon; there is also The Woman King, out in the autumn, which is based on historical events involving the enslavement of people in the 18th and 19th centuries that took place in the Kingdom of Dahomey, which is present-day Benin in West Africa. Boyega plays the role of King Ghezo, who ruled during an intense period of conflict. “There were some Africans selling Africans. It wasn’t all clean cut,” said Boyega. “That interested me. I like nuance.”

After war decimated the male population, the king recruited women for combat. In the film, Viola Davis plays the general, Nanisca, who leads an all-female military unit. For director Gina Prince-Bythewood, the big screen meeting between Boyega and Davis was special. “John brings a beautiful intensity,” she says. “And working with an actor like Viola Davis, you have to meet her where she is at. Both share the same desire to be great. He likes to play, he likes to push, he likes to try. And he is incredibly giving to his fellow actors. That is the energy I love as a director.”

Boyega humbly claims he did “no hard work” on set, he just admiringly watched “the best Black women in the industry” such as Lashana Lynch, Thuso Mbedu and ‘auntie’ Viola. “They strived. They trained to transform their bodies for these epic war and fighting scenes.” He appreciated how Prince-Bythewood wanted authenticity. “Most [directors] when they cast women as leads, you’ve got a petite woman taking out 10 guys! You give her a weird amount of strength,” he says. “Why don’t you base it on real women who did this? Who trained to go into combat and oiled up their skin, because they were like: ‘These men have strength, but when they catch us, I don’t want them to be able to get a grip.’”

And while Boyega plays a supporting role, his director credits him with getting the project off the ground. “John is used to being a leading man, but he told both me and Viola he was taking on this supporting role to use his power to get a film like this – about us – made,” Prince-Bythewood says. “I will always be grateful to him for that.”

The role of a king feels apt for Boyega – he’s outwardly confident and as the son of a church minister, he talks like he’s delivering a sermon. He has the balance of modesty and boasting just about right. “I don’t queue,” he says in a Nigerian accent. Still, he hasn’t always been this self-assured. Growing up, he was insecure about his chest and had surgery to remove some excess breast tissue. “I talk about it openly because a lot of men go through this,” he says of his gynaecomastia diagnosis, a condition which causes an increase in the amount of breast gland tissue in boys and men due to an imbalance in hormones. “I got that sorted and lived a healthy lifestyle afterwards. I haven’t looked back since.”

We move on from the waxwork and take a seat in a nondescript office overlooking Regent’s Park. It’s been two years since Boyega made his speech at the Black Lives Matter protest, down the road in Hyde Park. We meet, coincidentally, on the second anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which ignited a global protest movement. Boyega’s powerful and teary speech saw him call out the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness, the need to protect Black women, while also listing the names of Black victims of racial violence, such as Stephen Lawrence and Sandra Bland, who died in police custody in the US in 2015.

Boyega reflects on the 2020 protest – the huge crowds, the helicopters, the 26 missed calls from his agent. At the time, he wasn’t sure how the press or his peers would react. “I’ve had actors that I’m close to disagree with what I did that day,” he says. “Some people don’t want to work with me. It’s okay. Hollywood is not one entity.” The speech has been useful for him to decipher who he does and doesn’t want to work with. His role in The Woman King came directly off the back of that impassioned address. “I want to work in this industry as me,” he says.

People like Prince-Bythewood had “long been enamoured” with the actor’s talent. “But after watching his speech during the reckoning of 2020 imploring others to protect Black women, I knew he was someone I had to work with,” she says. “So I went to work on his role and made sure it was special enough to get a ‘yes’.”

Boyega has a big set piece in The Woman King, where his character gives a rousing speech, which involved 300-plus extras (he had cast and crew crying in the first rehearsal and every subsequent take). But his director points to a line of stage direction in the script, ‘The king walks as if the ground is honoured by its burden,’ that, for her, was quintessential Boyega. “That is John,” she says. “He brought such incredible swagger and depth and charisma and purpose to the role. Ghezo was a young king, faced with impending economic change and threats to his kingdom. John played his turbulence so authentically. He was beautifully complicated.”

In another of Boyega’s new projects, Breaking, he plays Brian Brown-Easley, a real-life war veteran who holds up a bank for $892.34 – the amount he is owed from a missing disability cheque. Boyega came on board late, after its original lead, Jonathan Majors, left due to a scheduling conflict and Boyega was unexpectedly available after a departure from another project. Breaking’s director Abi Damaris Corbin says that Boyega brought a “deep-rooted tenderness” to every frame of the film. “John had only a few weeks to get to know Brian, but the command he has over his craft is not something that can be learned in a few weeks. He’d prepared his body, spirit and craft long before we met. He’s not an actor with a shelf life. He’s evergreen.”

For Boyega, the decision to take the role was easy. “The deterioration of a man’s mind over time; the extreme decisions he goes to. You read that script as an actor, you’re going to do it.” Boyega liked that the character – soft spoken, awkward and fidgety – was so unlike himself. “I watched the CCTV footage [from the bank], which was harrowing,” he says.

When he’s not front of camera, Boyega is working behind the scenes on projects including Create Next with Converse, which offers short film funding to young Black filmmakers. He’s working with Black creatives because he believes they have been chronically overlooked. “When people say we’re forcing race into the conversation. Okay, here before you, I give you some Black talent, who still didn’t [get booked].”

“We’re talking about diversity and I know that irritates you,” says Boyega, referring to those who might question such funding. “But maybe that’s because you enjoyed a sea of blond hair and blue eyes. You’ve enjoyed it for years. You’ve enjoyed it so much, you think, why would they want that? It feels great to be a part of that ferocious, forceful, positive change, and I just love that they have to eat it. When we celebrate and empower ourselves, please believe that your position is to mind your business. Me uplifting myself is not against you. We just want the same opportunities.”

Boyega was born in south London’s Camberwell in 1992 and grew up in nearby Peckham. He got his start in acting through a community initiative called Theatre Peckham and trained at the Identity School of Acting in Hackney. “This is my first chain,” he says. He bought it with the few hundred pounds he earned working at the Tricycle Theatre in 2009 playing a small role in Roy Williams’s play Category B. He is also wearing the first watch he bought. “This thing’s come off,” he says, pointing at the pusher. “But I leave it that way. There’s something about it.”

He’s always had big aspirations, but in the early days, his options appeared to be soap operas, which he was insistent he didn’t want. Now, he says, “Attack the Block showed the kinds of things I wanted to do.” His patience paid off. The 2011 sci-fi flick garnered him attention Stateside, and would lead to his blockbuster breakthrough.

Things may have played out differently if he didn’t have the self-belief and foresight to not play it safe. He recalls watching Lupita Nyong’o winning a BAFTA for her role in 12 Years a Slave from his messy bedroom where he slept on a mattress because his “bloody Argos bed” had broken. He would go on to star alongside her in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, released the following year. “I was like, ‘One day, man’,” he says now. “It motivated me. It’s great to see the stars on set, because it tells me that I wasn’t crazy.”

Star Wars should have been a crowning achievement of a career apex. Through the four years Boyega starred in three movies, he also got a Kathryn Bigelow film under his belt [2017’s Detroit] and founded his own company Upperroom Entertainment Limited. He also managed to squeeze in a West End run in German tragedy Woyzeck. But as the Star Wars commitment wore on, so did Boyega’s disillusionment with the way in which Disney handled its casting, nudging characters played by people of colour to the periphery of the plots.

In fact, his role provoked racist abuse from Star Wars “fans,” and when we speak, a star of the latest franchise off-shoot, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Moses Ingram, had just revealed she too received hundreds of abusive messages when she debuted in the Disney+ series. Writing on Instagram, Ingram spoke of “this feeling that I have to shut up and take it, that I have to grin and bear it.” Boyega has no advice to impart, at least not in the public arena of a press interview. But he clearly has lived experience to pass on. “I’ve had people who have signed up to Star Wars reach out to me,” he states. “I’ll speak to them one-to-one to get the details of what their experiences are. But I wish her [Ingram] the best of luck.”

Since Star Wars, Boyega starred in Steve McQueen’s historical drama film Red, White and Blue, playing Leroy Logan, who joined the police force in the 1980s after witnessing two officers assault his father. The film was a part of McQueen’s acclaimed 2020 BBC series Small Axe, which focused on West Indian communities in London. Boyega’s portrayal in Red, White and Blue was a career-defining moment; he won a Golden Globe and critics called his portrayal “heroic”.

Small Axe was a triumphant moment in British filmmaking, portraying the richness and complexity of Black Britain in a way that had never been done before. Still, it was a challenge for McQueen to get such stories aired, admitting the development process took 11 years. It’s no surprise then, why so many Black British actors, Boyega included, have flown the nest and sought work across the pond. This in turn has sparked an ongoing social media debate about whether Black British actors should play historically significant African American figures. Boyega’s take is simple. “There’s a definition for acting and it’s nothing to do with being yourself,” he says. “When the cameras are rolling, your ancestry can’t really save you. It’s a job, bruv,” he affirms. “I just played a Nigerian. The ancestors weren’t there to push me. It’s a job. A skill set.”

Still, he’s keen to have the conversation. “If we are making mistakes as Black Brits, let’s listen. Let’s talk. We’re family.” But ultimately, he says the decisions about who is cast is in the hands of the directors, the producers, not the actors. “[The actor] just said yes to an opportunity,” he says.

It’s clear that Boyega isn’t here to appease anyone. “This is new money!” he proclaims, meaning that he doesn’t adhere to archaic, “respectable” politics that dictate how celebrities should behave. When videos of him at Notting Hill Carnival went viral, and Star Wars fans claimed to be outraged by his “raunchy” dancing, Boyega didn’t bat an eyelid. “‘I am not here to cater to anybody’s vision of what they think a leading star should be,” he says. “Man’s not no flimsy guy.”

He’s sad to be missing the long-awaited return of Carnival this year as he plans to spend the summer in the US, going to concerts and roller skating. He loves the nightlife there, too. “I don’t go to the club and sit in the section. I like to dance and I like to whine.” He celebrated his 30th birthday this March at a club in Atlanta. In London, he’s more of a homebody than a party animal and a typical week for him is very normal. “I work a nine-to-five during the week,” he says. On the odd occasion, he might go to dinner with his boys, but he pretty much lives the life he was living before he became famous. “I just had to go down Peckham High Street to get my mum a cow leg.”

So now that he has reached a new decade of life, does he feel pressure to settle down? He was once too focused on work to focus on love. “Both are a priority,” he laughs. “That’s changed. I’m 30 now. From 28, I just worked on getting peace and getting myself together. Moving with honesty and transparency. No misleading. No lying. And being devoted to what I commit myself to. I mean, that’s the mental prep, but the field…” I ask if he was a ladies’ man, back in the day. “Come on, [I’m] Yoruba,” he smiles, referring to his Nigerian heritage. “When I was in college, I was the guy. I had many wives.”

He has rules about who he dates. “I only date Black,” he says, “then it’s about chemistry, personality, goals. Is there a synergy? Can I help you? Can you help me?” He also dates in a way that ensures his privacy. “I’m very disciplined in the type of women I speak to. They don’t want you in their business.” His parents Samson and Abigail are his biggest muse. “Being in the public eye, they would prefer if you had the wife and family. It’s the ultimate PR package. But my parents have been together for 35 years. There’s nothing that this world can do in terms of pressure to make me be inspired by anything else but my parents.”

Despite reaching career heights in his twenties only few have seen, Boyega is tenderly navigating the work-life balance like all of us. He’s grateful for the man he’s becoming. “Years ago, I didn’t know who I wanted to be, but now, I don’t have to think about certain things before I do it. Now, I’m attracting [the right] people.” It definitely appears so. Videos posted on his Instagram show Boyega’s loved ones sipping champagne as they lovingly rejoice in his regal waxwork, as he says, “It’s a moment to capture me, at this age, at this time.” But out of all of the successes we’ve discussed – and there are plenty – he talks about uplifting others through his projects with the pride of a king. “There’s something it does to your spirits, to your existence,” he says. “I feel happy doing this. I feel comfortable doing this.”