John Boyega was ’emotional’ over Ewan McGregor’s video defending Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram from racist trolls-Sabrina Barr-Entertainment – Metro

Ewan McGregor’s video ‘kind of got me’, the actor said (Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

John Boyega has shared how he felt watching Ewan McGregor come to the defence of his Obi-Wan Kenobi co-star Moses Ingram when she was targeted with racist vitriol, saying he felt ‘emotional’.

In May this year, days after the show was released on Disney Plus, Moses – who played the fearsome Inquisitor Reva on the show – spoke out against the racist abuse she’d suffered, with Star Wars also releasing a statement which read: ‘If anyone intends to make her feel in any way unwelcome, we have only one thing to say: we resist.’

Ewan slammed the trolls in a defiant video message, telling anyone who had sent her ‘bullying messages’ that ‘you’re no Star Wars fan in my mind’.

Having said he felt ‘peace’ with the way Disney handled the situation, John – who played Stormtrooper-turned-rebel Finn in the Star Wars sequel trilogy – has revealed how ‘emotional’ it was to witness Ewan’s video.

‘I don’t know how Disney have done, and I don’t know how they’ve moved with everything,’ he said on the Just for Variety podcast.

‘All I know is about specifically Lucasfilm, about the Obi-Wan Kenobi stuff. And I saw that Ewan McGregor video. And that kind of got me, that was nice. That got me a little emotional on that. That’s cool that he showed up for her like that. That’s cool.’

Ewan slammed trolls who’d targeted Moses online (Picture: Instagram/Lucasfilm/Disney Plus)

In the video that he shared about the racism Moses had experienced, Ewan said hearing some of the ‘most horrendous, racist DMs’ had ‘broke my heart’.

‘Moses is a brilliant actor, she’s a brilliant woman, and she’s absolutely amazing in this series. She brings so much to the series, she brings so much to the franchise, and it just sickened me to my stomach to hear that this has been happening,’ he said.

He continued: ‘I just want to say as the leading actor in the series, as the executive producer on the series, that we stand with Moses. We love Moses, and if you’re sending her bullying messages, you’re no Star Wars fan in my mind.

‘There’s no place for racism in this world and I totally stand with Moses.’

In Moses’ own video message, she said she’d received ‘hundreds’ of derogatory messages, one of which said: ‘Your days are numbered.’

‘I also see those of you out there who put on a cape for me and that really does mean the world to me because, you know, there’s nothing anybody can do about this,’ she said at the time.

At the end of her video, she said: ‘So I really just wanted to come on, I think, and say thank you to the people who show up for me in the comments and the places I’m not going to put myself. And to the rest of y’all, y’all weird.’

Ahead of the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015, the first Star Wars film in which John starred, he addressed racism within the fandom that was targeted in his direction, stating at the time: ‘To get into a serious dialogue with people who judge a person based on the melanin in their skin? They’re stupid, and I’m not going to lose sleep over people.’

The actor added: ‘You guys got every single alien in this movie imaginable to man. With tentacles, five eyes. Aliens that, if they existed, we’d definitely have an issue.

‘We’d have to get them to the government and be, like, ‘What are you?’ Yet what you want to do is fixate on another human being’s colour. You need to go back to school and unlearn what you have learned. I think Yoda said that, or Obi-Wan.’

Obi-Wan Kenobi is available to watch on Disney Plus.

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