Star Wars actor John Boyega has spoken about his childhood friendship with Damilola Taylor in Peckham, and how his poem read at his funeral ultimately spurred him on with his ambition to be a movie star.
He was interviewed by John Wilson on BBC Radio 4’s Last Word, as part of a look at the life of Richard Taylor, Damilola’s father – who died last week after a long battle with prostate cancer.
Boyega was one of the last people to see ten-year-old Damilola alive before he was fatally stabbed in the leg in a Peckham stairwell in 2000. Speaking of those final hours, the actor, who was eight at the time of Damilola’s killing, said:
“From the hours we left him in Peckham to the hours when I went home, and then the police were at our door and there was a whole investigation that we were involved in, was definitely life-changing for me, definitely altered my perspective.”
“Even though I was young, it was a shock to understand how mortality worked. To think that somebody as young as me could pass away in such a horrific way was hard for me to understand or comprehend. And I definitely think [his death] has shaped me through the years and just affected my perspective on certain things.”
He spoke about a poem that Damilola had written and which his father read at his funeral, about, “how far he wanted his dreams to spread”. It “gave birth to this mentality that I had”, Boyega said. “What is truly my dream? Do I have the guts to identify what my dream is? Am I too young to identify my dream and work towards it?
“And after reading that poem, I was just like, yeah, I have no excuse. I want to be a movie star.”
Boyega admitted that he had never spoken publicly about his friend before. “I’m quite private in general, but with this specifically, it’s that celebrity thing of not wanting to get in front of very real-life news.” But he decided to talk after Richard Taylor’s death, adding: “Now that he’s gone, if I don’t speak up now, when am I ever going to speak up?”
The actor also had warm words for the Damilola Taylor Trust, set up by his parents after their son died, and called Mr. Taylor someone who was “for the people and the community” who turned his son’s “tragic loss into something triumphant”.